Gretal Bonge confidently steps off the canoe and heads up the beach while making a phone call. A few minutes later and she’s striding up a village path to her small shop where she collects refreshments for a women’s saving club meeting that is about to take place.
Judging by the amount of biscuits she’s gathering, there will be a good turnout from the Garasa and Siporae clubs for this afternoon’s conversations.
From another room behind her shop, Gretal emerges with a large wooden box: this is the ‘bank’ or savings box used for keeping cash. In a remote location this is the safest way for members to store their money. It’s not light but we manage to take turns lugging it to the large community hall at Panaui village.
Saving clubs are a common way for women in Solomon Islands to collectively improve their family income and situation. A model designed for areas with no formal banking services or access, these clubs enable women to grow their personal savings, take out micro loans for business development and share resources — essentially acting as a ‘village bank’.
“It's important for women to save their money for the future, and also for family needs and also any emergency needs,” says Gretal whose role with Natural Resources Development Foundation (NRDF) as the coordinator for women’s saving clubs is an important one.
She trains the women in how to run their self-selected clubs and coordinates 19 clubs and 26 sub-groups with members from Sirebe, Siporae, Lukelombere, Zoko, Miqusava, Vuri, Padezaka and Garasa. These are Babatana tribes and clans who are all in various stages of developing forest carbon projects or trading forest carbon credits as part of the Babatana Rainforest Conservation Project.
“Today the women are very happy to hear some awareness,” says Gretal. “They want to know more about how to get money and knowledge to grow their living.”
At least 30 women turn up to the meeting, arriving on foot from the north and south of Panaui village — further north along Choiseul island from Sasamunnga village where the NRDF office is.
After a prayer and introductions, and over tea and biscuits, they work through the monthly banking process and take turns sharing how their groups work — each group being part of their larger club. As they share ideas and hopes, it becomes evident the groups are also about organising and planning together as a collective.
“Groups help all us women have the power and strength to do many activities in the family or community,” says Leah Vilaka from Siporae. There are six sub-groups in the Siporae club, and Leah is from a group called Ratasaru.
“We meet each month, and we save sometimes, we prepare for market sometimes. We talk together and tell our needs.”
“We have savings for when we need. Like for school fees. For when we need to go to the hospital, and other plans we have, we can use the savings,” she explains.
“If we didn’t have a saving group, we would not be able to prepare for our plans and support things we need or any emergency situations.”
Gretal says there are so many challenges women face when trying to save and the themes across the groups are similar in terms of these challenges and needs.
“Income is not very good in our country, one of the challenges is school fees. The only other access for income is in producing food and taking it to markets and making hand-crafts.” says Gretal.
“When carbon income comes, they will move their projects along and have more vision for their saving clubs,” says Gretal.
“I think it will help women grow their savings and it will give more women voice, and community will hear those women because they will have their voice.”
“In this time, women need to grow their livelihoods because there are so many changes. They need to have their voice so their family will have a deep [change] in society. To be a woman in Choiseul, we must have creative minds and think about all the things we can do,” she says.
Catering businesses are a common initiative supported by the saving clubs, where some groups use their collective savings to pay for catering equipment which enables them to support community meetings, workshops and church events.
The cash flow from these jobs is important but small and the groups are hopeful they can expand into other ventures soon too.
Leah says her group are making plans while waiting for carbon income to come in: “We want to improve our sanitation. We want [to buy] tools for gardening. Sewing machines and dying and printing equipment to make lavalava [sarong skirts],” she says as other Siporae members murmur in agreement.
Garasa Saving Club thinks similarly. With 34 members across the sub-groups including a group for school-age girls so they can start saving early, their representative Docus Barivudu says the Garasa club is working well for members but she wants to know more about how carbon income will grow what is possible for them.
“So far we’ve been able to do the plans we had, including getting equipment for catering. We believe we will grow more so when [carbon income] comes we will have more plans and objectives,” she says.
“We are also interested in investing in transport, sewing machines, chickens and eggs, and improving our households and sanitation. Some of us have no water access.”
Saving clubs and groups have been operating with NRDF for 13 years now, changing the daily lives of women. Each month, groups meet for a designated banking day where they deposit any amount of money into their personal savings account.
They also deposit $2 each into a ‘working savings’ account which is for buying shared items and for collective business development, like the catering equipment. And they deposit $5 into a loan account which is there to help women who want to start a small business or for an emergency.
“Before, women had no money and we depended on men,” says Docus. “But now when we do our savings, we have our own money. At the end of the year, we all have some money we have saved. When savings have come in, our homes have changed.”
While these savings clubs operate independently of the forest carbon projects on Choiseul, they are also intrinsically linked. The women in these groups will receive a portion of the carbon income under the benefit-sharing plan decided by each tribe or clan.
And although the group members don’t travel to the forest areas as often as the men in their families, they do have a strong connection with the forests under threat on Choiseul, and the nature they all depend on.
“The forest is important for our people. We get medicines from the forest, we garden on the land for food that we sell. Biodiversity is very important for our tribe,” says Elsy Vatora from Siporae.
“It is important for women that the forest is maintained, for the carbon trade and to keep the CO2 in the trees. So we women support this … it keeps the planet cool. If there is no forest, we don’t expect any clean water so we need the forest to stand there. And if there is no forest, all this area will get warm,” she says.
“I think it is best we stop cutting down and clearing trees. Instead, we should leave native forests to be as they are. And we can continue to use the places we already cleared for food.”
Docus also stands with the protection of forests and has seen a shift in weather over her lifetime: “Now in the gardens, there is less fruit. Before we had plenty of fruit. We have lost the big, good fruit in our garden. There is less rain. Now just small rain makes a flood. Before it had to rain a lot before it would flood,” she says.
“The Garasa forest is a long way, in the bush. Only the men go there. But we know, if there is damage in our land, every one of us will be worse off. Now we are here, the Elders — men or women — we are Elders in our tribe. Those [Elder] roles are for the people, they will keep our land properly. It is our responsibility.”
“If the land is logged, it won’t feed us. Maybe for 50 or 60 years, it won’t feed us. The land will be finished. The benefit from logging is so short. So we don’t like it when logging comes because protecting the land is more important than logging.”
Women's saving clubs in the Babatana Rainforest Conservation Project are supported by NRDF with thanks to the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the German development agency GIZ. Carbon project development receives technical support from NRDF and Nakau.
© 2026 Nakau
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