We began the year by looking at our successes and challenges with five Kenyan community currencies in 2015. Out of this came the Sarafu-Credit model which focuses heavily on credit-clearing. Grassroots Economics is doing a lot behind the scenes to prepare for rolling out Sarafu-Credit over 2016 and will be explaining the process more as it takes shape over the next few months.
Gatina-Pesa was the first community currency to pilot the new Sarafu-Credit credit-clearing meetings after their monthly market day. We're happy to be seeing a strong emphasis on balancing community currency accounts with increasing membership and acceptance.
Permaculture Gardens in the schools of Bangladesh's Bangla-Pesa program near Mombasa are starting to sprout. The students are learning about agroforestry, soil conservation and nutrition, and the local businesses are excited to have a source of local produce. We've just installed a rain water catchment system which will help in providing a more continuous water supply.
