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The Background to the experiments is the work of Stuart Rutherford, who has researched how poor people manage their money, worldwide, for thirty years.

Rutherford's Book, The Poor and Their Money was updated and republished in 2009. It sets out what poor people need in the way of money management services, how they struggle to access useful services, and what modern `microfinance` practitioners can learn from them.

In 1996 Rutherford founded SafeSave, a money management service for the slum-dwellers of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Unlike other microfinance banks,SafeSave does not focus on credit for micro-business, but on basic savings and loan services for managing life on a day-to-day basis. There are no groups, no joint liability, and clients receive a visit from a bank worker every working day.

Hrishipara is a village in central Bangladesh. In 2002 Rutherford founded a rural version ofSafeSave there called Shohoz Shonchoy. It develops and tests innovative approaches to money management services for poor and very poor villagers.

Three different kinds of Product are undergoing testing in Hrishipara. All three respond to poor people`s need to build savings in the face of acute shortages of money. The products test different ways of helping people to save while providing them with access to liquidity through loans. On the Products page you can find progress reports on each of them.

A Shohoz Shonchoy client, Asif, talking to S K Sinha, one of the founding owners of the organization