On Monday Sierra Leone began a 42-day countdown towards declaring itself free of the Ebola virus that began to ravage the country in March 2014, leaving 3,995 dead. Aside from the human cost of the virus, the economy too faces a long road to recovery.
Just months after the outbreak was first declared, the economy was left in ruins. Communities were quarantined, businesses shut down, people confined to their homes, bringing the country to a virtual standstill. The World Bank estimates that nearly 180,000 people in Sierra Leone have lost their jobs due to the Ebola crisis, with women hit the hardest.
But were it not for a network of well-developed microfinance groups, the economic devastation could have far been worse: As a part of their poverty-reduction program prior to the Ebola outbreak, CARE, one of the world’s largest international disaster relief organizations, had introduced Village Savings and Loan Associations, or VSLAs, in which villagers pool their savings and can issue one another small, short-term loans.