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From the Grio:

It’s like karmic cash. You get as good as you give. And Marie Lumen Clersaint is Brooklyn’s reigning queen of sou-sous — an informal savings club popular among Caribbean and African immigrants. When anyone in her tight knit circle of savers needs a large sum of money, they come to her.

At any given time, Clersaint runs two sou-sous where people come together and make regular contributions to a common fund, which is then disbursed as a lump sum to one member of the group every cycle. The payouts for her current sou-sous are $20,000 and $10,000. They have 40 and 20 members, respectively. Each member puts in $500 bi-weekly. Every two weeks one member of each sou-sou will receive their group’s entire payout, until each person gets a turn. The $20,000 sou-sou runs or 18 months, the $10,000 saving club lasts 10 months. For the person who gets the first disbursement, it’s an interest-free cash advance and for the last payee it’s a no-interest savings plan. And for those in the middle, it’s a combination of both. There are no checks or money orders involved. It’s all cash all the time.

[…]

Many want to join Clersaint’s unofficial savings club, but the chosen are few. She has to be very selective because it’s all based on the honor system. There is no legal paperwork involved. No credits check or proof of income required. You don’t even have to sign your name. She has to know and trust every participant. There

I learned about the existence of such groups in W. Africa in the context of women-led microfinance initiatives. I am glad to see such decentralized, community-based practices taking root here. I hope it will be the wave of the future, as we move away from centralized, parasitic, litigious, profit-driven banks which strive for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement and do not aim to build and invest in the community.

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