aidha’s Compass Clubs promote saving.

The programme was launched in June 2009 as aidha’s first action-based learning programme.

Learning how to manage money and actually managing it are two very different things.  At aidha, we’re not interested in theoretical learning per se.  We need change. We need action.

Through the compass clubs, our members develop practical knowledge and understanding.  But more importantly, they implement the learning.

We do not simply talk about the how-tos of budgeting. We create and use budgets.  We do not just talk about the necessity of saving.  We save.

how Compass Clubs work

Behaviour changes when we have

• knowledge
• goals, and
• rewards.

Each Compass Club is structured as a peer support group. Ten to fifteen ladies come together for a 90-minute session once a month for nine months.   With the support and guidance of a trained mentor, they learn, they share, and they motivate one another to put their learning into practice.

At every session, students work through an explicit learning topic:  budgeting, goal setting, or investment analysis, for example.  There is a real academic underpinning to the Compass Club programme.  But we don’t treat this learning as ‘academic.’  We discuss how we will use it, and we use it.

At the beginning of the programme, our students also set specific savings goals. Our students save for a purpose:  to build a home, to buy a carabao, to send a child to school, or to buy a motorcycle for the husband’s new taxi service.  They know how much they need and why.

With the goals in place, they begin saving.  They save regularly and faithfully, in their own  bank account.  There’s no pooling of money at aidha.

And, when goals are met, we cheer.  Rewards are a vital part of the programme. They are simple.  Just a button or a small certificate.  But they work – because these rewards are endowed with meaning.

Knowledge, goals, and rewards.  That’s how the Compass Club programmes work.  That’s why they work.  That’s why aidha’s students achieve great things.

Look at our photo book here to see aidha’s clubs in action!

Click here to view this photo book larger