Kupfuma Ishungu Rural Micro-Finance Programme’s (KI-RMFP) goal is that of contributing to the “sustainable protection and promotion of the livelihood security of rural economically active households”. Accordingly, the project deliberately targets the rural poor households in areas that are susceptible to poor rainfall patterns and consequently poor harvests. The programme uses a widely accepted approach for delivering financial services to the rural poor: the Internal Savings and Lending (ISAL) model. It is seen as a countermeasure to short-term interventions that are dominated by food aid and a mechanism that can build resilience of communities and households against current and future shocks. Its contributions to some of the challenges currently facing the region such as food insecurity, growing levels of orphans, HIV and AIDS and poverty is highly rated. Against this background, the RHVP Regional Evidence-Building Agenda (REBA) seeks to build and distil evidence of the KI-RMFP in order to yield useful insights and lessons for the design and implementation of scaled-up social protection in southern Africa.

The KI- RMFP has had measurable successes however, there is considerable evidence suggesting that the origins of vulnerability that initially informed the development of the project have changed. For example, the declining macro-economic trends in Zimbabwe not envisaged at the start of this project are continually undermining gains that have been achieved by the project. Although individual and group savings appear to have been increasing, in real terms the savings have actually been diminishing. This has several implications on the management of the project: rather than focusing on the numerical growth in the project more attention should be focused on maintaining and growing the value of returns in the midst of a growing inflation rate. While project participants have embarked on asset based savings as an innovation aimed at protecting their savings from inflation, the activity has reduced in scale and focused more on the smaller assets. It is therefore important for the project to critical examine how this may be impacting on the quality of life of clients. This has been compounded by the fact that insufficient priority has been given to evaluating the project’s impact on clients. Therefore, issues on impact on food and nutrition security, gender imbalances and children’s welfare present an opportunity for CARE or other organisations for adequately assessing and addressing. Besides the testimonies from the beneficiaries on how the project has changed their lives, it is important that these are validated with “quality of life” indicators that may include coping strategies.