Strengthening Cash transfers for Access to finance, Livelihood and Entrepreneurship (SCALE) is a three-year (2013- 2016) project funded by the European Union which CARE International in Zambia, in collaboration with the Ministry ofCommunityDevelopmentandSocialWelfare(MCDSW),isimplementing. Itisapracticalandscalablemodelfor social and economic empowerment that brings tangible benefits to communities and contributes to poverty reduction.
The SCALE Project is premised on the idea that combining social cash transfers (SCT) with Village Savings and Loans (VSL), which are enriched with business skills using a Selection, Planning and Management (SPM) approach, will enable beneficiaries to graduate to sustainable livelihoods beyond SCT.
The complementary model of VSL and SPM builds on the existing Government SCT programme. The project has organised beneficiaries of SCT into Village Saving and Loans Associations (VSLAs) and trained them in VSL and SPM methodologies.