Maimu, Liberia: Volunteer Savings and Lending Associations (VSLAs) help address a critical step in the transition from conflict recovery to development.

The idea is simple, and it works through voluntary cooperation. Village residents, generally women, put their cash towards shares in their local association. With support from UNV and its NGO partner, they themselves manage the pool of money through volunteer committees.

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After a song and a prayer, the women get down to business. As one by one their names are called, they step forward to receive a small green booklet marked 'VSLA'. The pride on their faces says that these books are more than just paper. In this part of rural Liberia, these books are empowerment.

The little green books exist because even in the capital, Monrovia, few Liberians can access any kind of banks or finance. War devastates services and institutions, and without them there's no chance of building a local economy, especially in rural areas.

Until now. The VSLA books mean that people like Kaeta M. Kapola can save the money from her bakery to help pay school fees for her children. And her friend Sarah Toper explains that the scheme is about more than just business – it also builds community cohesion. "If anyone gets sick, a social fund is there to help us," she says. "For example, recently a friend's husband died, and we assisted them with 500 Liberian Dollars [about US$7]."

Initiated by UNV and local NGO Liberia Initiative for Development Services in late 2008, the Volunteer Savings and Lending Associations (VSLA) help address a critical step in the transition from conflict recovery to development.

The idea is simple, and it works through voluntary cooperation. Village residents, generally women, put their cash towards shares in their local association. With support from UNV and its NGO partner, they themselves manage the pool of money through volunteer committees.

The VSLA can then lend small sums to enable members to grow their businesses or bail out people in difficulties. The monthly meetings also draw the community together in a common purpose, and the women are offered classes in record-keeping, accounts and business skills too.

UNV Programme Officer Rukaya Mohammed explains that each group comprises about 30 people, and according to their jointly-drafted constitutions they meet about once a month. At the start of each meeting, each member must buy from one to five shares, which is recorded in the ledger. They can then request credit, upon which an agreed rate of interest is charged, and the remaining funds are placed in a cash box kept by one member (with two keys kept by two others to prevent misuse).

Every month Sarah Toper walks several miles to Totota to be part of the VSLA. "This programme helped us a lot," she says. "We didn't know each other – but now we associate with one another, sharing with each other."

"Before, we had no savings we could use," says William Flomo, an elderly member of the Maimu VSLA. "But now we do business, bring money back, save it or borrow it and buy more goods to sell. We want to convince and encourage other villages to come and join us," he says.

Thanks to the VSLA, the people of Maimu are getting ambitious. They are looking at ways to put the social fund to use building a community meeting hut for the VSLA meetings, and some are enquiring about hiring a teacher to help them learn to read and write.

These are small steps in the transition to development, but it's through this kind of volunteer association that Liberians can build a shared future.