AssetsAfrica is a pilot program that tests asset-building innovations for impoverished households and communities in Uganda. Participants purchased motorcycles, bicycles, goats, oxen, and land with the money they saved in their AssetsAfrica savings accounts. The longitudinal quasi-experiment research includes surveys, in-depth interviews, and savings account monitoring.

CSD assisted the Xin Jiang provincial government with policy design and research design of China's first asset-building program, implemented in 2005. CSD will conduct ongoing research on the program in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Xin Jiang program may serve as a model for asset-building programs to be implemented in other parts of China.

The Center for Social Development and the New America Foundation's Asset Building Program launched the Global Assets Project (GAP) in July 2006 to inform and promote development of asset-building policies and programs worldwide. This coordinated initiative seeks to build on successes of domestic asset-building programs to an international level by informing new policies, testing their effectiveness, creating networks of scholars and policy makers, building the global knowledge base, and promoting meetings and information sharing. See more information at the GAP website.

 

Funding provided by the Levi Strauss Foundation and Citigroup Foundation.

CSD provided policy and research design support to the government of Hong Kong as it developed a proposal for a national Child Development Fund (CDF). Under this program, the government would establish child development accounts (CDAs) that low-income families could use to save money for their children's future and help their children escape an intergenerational cycle of poverty.

Two asset-based matched savings initiatives are underway in Southern Hungary and eastern Slovakia. These three-year asset-building pilot programs will focus on the rural poor with the goal of encouraging low-income families to save for assets that will pave the way to a better life. The initiatives were modeled after CSD's asset-building pilot projects in the U.S. and abroad.

In collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Social Welfare and the State Islamic University (UIN), CSD has designed an asset-based pilot project to be implemented in poor areas of Indonesia. The project will run in parallel with Indonesia's successful micro-finance program (Cooperative Micro Businesses, or KUBE program), with the goal of alleviating poverty.

Ecosandals Investment Limited (EIL) has developed and implemented an asset-based development project in a shantytown outside Nairobi, Kenya. The goal of the project is to enable families to save and make investments in the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The project was modeled after CSD's asset-building pilot projects in the U.S. and abroad.

CSD has provided policy and research design support to the governments of Peru and Colombia as they develop three asset-based poverty alleviation initiatives. The objectives of these initiatives, which target the rural poor, especially poor women, are to increase participants' access to financial services and to help them to build assets.

This pilot project explores a family asset-based intervention to care for increasing numbers of orphaned children in Africa. The strategy combines standard reactive care with an economic empowerment program that uses Child Development Accounts (CDAs).

 

Funding provided by the Social Intervention Group (SIG) at Columbia University and the Friedman Family Foundation.

The Post Secondary Education Account (PSEA) Policy will establish a college savings account for every Singaporean aged 7 to 20 in 2008. This program is one of Singapore's three national asset-building programs that create a cradle-to-grave asset-building system for all Singaporeans. CSD conducts research on this comprehensive asset-building system, which offers insight into effective design of a universal asset-building system.

CSD provides policy and research design support to the government of South Korea as it develops and implements programs that focus on social investment. With assistance from CSD, South Korea introduced a nationwide Child Development Account (CDA) program in 2007. In addition, the Seoul City Government is considering implementing a demonstration of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) for low-income families.

CSD assisted the Taipei City government with policy and research design for its Taipei Family Development Account (TFDA) pilot program. The three-year program, which was implemented in 2000, was modeled after U.S.-based Individual Development Account (IDA) programs. Research in the TFDA demonstrates that low-income families in Taipei can accumulate assets for the future and that saving incentives play an important role in these families' long-term saving and investment plans.

CSD is part of a global consortium supported by the MasterCard Foundation that is exploring the potential for piloting a youth savings initiative in multiple developing countries. In addition to CSD, the consortium includes Save the Children, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and the New America Foundation. The consortium’s goals for the 2009-2010 year include identifying four developing countries in which to implement these pilots, along with local financial and research institutions that could assist in implementing and evaluating the pilots.