The union at local level
Cooperative clusters
A cluster is the union at local level: a group of members in one town, village, market, estate or workplace who meet at the same place every Saturday at 5:00pm and save together. Everything the cooperative does at scale starts in a cluster, and every figure in your back office starts as an entry somebody wrote down at one of these meetings.
Cluster meeting · every Saturday, 5:00pm
What a cluster is
Not a branch office and not a committee. A cluster is the members themselves, meeting in one room at one hour, doing the four things the cooperative is made of: saving, recording, borrowing and repaying, and subscribing shares.
The union has one appointment in its week and this is it. Saturday at 5:00pm is fixed so that a member who travels, or who moves from one town to another, always knows when their cooperative is sitting. It also makes the record honest: savings are counted in Saturdays, and a Saturday that was missed cannot be quietly filled in later.
A cluster does not hold your money on its own account and it does not set its own interest rate. The terms come from the union and are the same everywhere: an ordinary share is ₦1,000, a loan may be requested after three months of consistent savings, and savings run for twelve uninterrupted months before they may be withdrawn with 30% interest at the end of your financial year.
A cluster in short
- Meets
- Every Saturday at 5:00pm, at a place the cluster keeps to
- Made of
- Members of the union who live or trade near one another
- Officers
- A chairperson, a financial secretary and a treasurer
- Keeps
- The weekly record of savings, loans, loan repayments and investment
- Records online
- The financial secretary enters the week's figures the same day
- Terms
- Set by the union, identical in every cluster
- Found in
- Rural and urban settings across Africa
Rural and urban
Rural clusters
A rural cluster forms around a village, a farm settlement or a market day. Income there often arrives in lumps — after a harvest, after a sale — rather than in a weekly wage, so part of the cluster's work is turning an irregular income into a regular entry. Members set aside from what comes in and bring the same amount every Saturday.
Rural clusters sit closest to the first stage of what the union is building: food production and aggregation. Members there are often the people the cooperative's processing projects will buy from.
Urban clusters
An urban cluster forms around a street, a market, an estate, a campus or a workplace. Income is usually more frequent and the temptation is the opposite one: money that comes in weekly also goes out weekly, and the cluster's job is to take the savings out before the week eats them.
Urban clusters carry more of the later stages of the chain — processing, packaging and distribution — and more of the members who subscribe shares in those projects.
Who does what
The people who run a cluster
Three officers and the members who elect them. The duties are split on purpose: the person who receives the money is not the person who writes it down, and neither of them chairs the meeting.
Chairperson
Opens the meeting at 5:00pm, keeps the order of business, and closes it. Settles disagreements in the room, makes sure every member who came is heard, and carries the cluster's business to the union office.
The chairperson does not handle cash and does not keep the record. Their authority is over the meeting, not over the money.
Financial secretary
Keeps the record. As each member saves, the financial secretary writes it against their name, then enters the week online: savings, loans, loan repayment and investment, member by member. The entry page opens with an access code issued by the union office.
Before the meeting closes they read the week's entries back to the room. What they enter is what appears in every member's back office, so the job asks for care rather than speed.
Treasurer
Takes custody of what is collected. Counts it in front of the meeting, checks the cash against the financial secretary's entries before anybody leaves, and moves the money on to the union as the office directs.
A difference between the cash and the record is raised in the room, that Saturday, not the following week.
Members
Attend, save, keep the run unbroken, repay loans on time, and subscribe shares when the union opens a project. Members elect the officers and members can remove them.
The last duty is the important one: check your own entry. A cooperative is only as honest as the members who read the record back.
Three pairs of hands, never one
One person receiving the money, recording it and chairing the meeting is how savings groups fail. In a Requiza cluster the treasurer holds what is collected, the financial secretary writes and enters it, the chairperson runs the meeting, and the members hear the figures read back before anyone goes home. If your cluster starts letting one person do two of these jobs, raise it with the union office.
Cluster governance the office has not published yet
- How officers are elected
- To be published
- Length of an officer's term
- To be published
- Minimum members in a cluster
- To be published
- Cluster list
- Held by the office, not published on this site — ask and it will be given
What happens at a Saturday meeting, in order
This is the order of business the union asks every cluster to keep. It is short on ceremony and long on the record, because the record is what a member goes home with.
| No. | Item | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Opening and attendance | The chairperson opens at 5:00pm and attendance is taken. A member who cannot come sends their savings with somebody they trust and says so beforehand. |
| 02 | Last Saturday's business | What was agreed the week before is read back, and anything left open is closed or carried forward by name. |
| 03 | Savings | Members come forward one at a time. The treasurer receives what is brought; the financial secretary writes it against the member's name in front of them. |
| 04 | Loan repayments | Members repaying a loan pay their instalment. It is recorded against the loan, not against savings, so a repayment never disguises itself as a saving. |
| 05 | Loan requests | A member with three months of consistent savings may ask for a loan. The request is heard in the meeting and sent on to the union office for a decision. |
| 06 | Shares and projects | When the union opens a quarterly project, subscriptions are taken here. Shares are ₦1,000 each and the minimum subscription on a project is 100 shares. |
| 07 | Union notices | Streams of income, business school dates, and the campaigns, challenges and tasks the office has sent to this cluster. |
| 08 | Reading back and closing | The financial secretary reads the week's entries back to the meeting, the treasurer confirms the cash against them, and the chairperson closes. The entries go online the same day. |
If your entry is not read back, ask for it
Step 08 is not a formality. A cluster that stops reading the record back has stopped being a cooperative, whatever it still calls itself. You are entitled to hear your own figure, and to see it in your back office afterwards.
The same figures, in three places
What you handed over, what the financial secretary entered, and what your back office shows should agree. When they do not, raise it the following Saturday with the chairperson, and write to the union office if it is not settled there.
Joining a cluster
Find the cluster nearest you
The union does not print a directory of cluster addresses on this website. Cluster locations are held by the office and given out when you ask for them, or when you register.
That is deliberate. Clusters move, new ones are confirmed, and a few are still gathering their first members. A published list would send somebody across town on a Saturday evening to a room that is no longer used, and it would also print the meeting places of people who are carrying cash. Asking the office takes one message and gives you a place that is meeting this week.
Tell us your town, your local government area and your state. If there is a cluster near you, the office will point you to it and tell you who its financial secretary is. If there is not one yet, the office will say so plainly — and you can read below about starting one.
No cluster directory is published here
Ask the union office where the nearest cluster meets, or register and the office will place you in it.
How to reach the office
- Tell us
- Your name, your phone number, and your town, local government area and state
- Meetings
- Every cluster meets on Saturday at 5:00pm
- Registered office
- To be published
- Office phone line
- To be published
Starting a cluster where there is none
The union wants clusters in places that do not have one. It does not hand a cluster to anybody who asks for it, because a cluster is work before it is a title — and because the moment somebody collects money in the union's name, the union's reputation is in their hands.
Here is the honest list of what starting one takes.
People who will actually save
Not names on a paper — a group who will turn up on Saturday at 5:00pm, week after week, and put money down. The union has not published a minimum number of founding members; ask the office for the current figure before you start signing anybody up.
A place to meet, every single Saturday
Dry, reachable on foot by most of your members, and available at the same hour every week rather than only when it suits somebody. If the room is paid for, the cluster agrees who pays and how before the first meeting, not afterwards.
Three officers, and not from one household
A chairperson, a financial secretary and a treasurer, chosen by the founding members. Keeping them independent of one another is the whole safeguard. Your financial secretary must be able to read, write and use an Android phone, because the record goes online the same day it is written.
An access code from the union office
The financial secretary's weekly entry page opens with an access code the office issues to a confirmed cluster. No code means no online record, and no online record means the members' savings do not appear in their back offices. It is not optional.
The union's confirmation, in writing, first
Do not collect one naira in the union's name before the office has confirmed your cluster. Anyone who asks you to save into a “Requiza cluster” that the office cannot confirm is not running a cluster. Write to the office and check.
The discipline to keep it going
Members' savings must run weekly and uninterrupted for twelve months to earn the interest and qualify for the dividend. A cluster that meets when it feels like it breaks its own members' terms. Starting one is a twelve-month promise at minimum.
What the union gives a new cluster, and what it does not
The union provides
- The operational terms, identical to every other cluster's.
- The online record, and the access code that opens the financial secretary's entry page.
- A back office for every member of your cluster.
- Projects to subscribe to, at ₦1,000 a share, when the union opens a new quarterly stream.
- Places at the Streams of Income Business School.
- Notices, campaigns, challenges and tasks sent to your cluster from the office.
The union does not provide
- Rent for your meeting place, or furniture for it.
- A salary or allowance for cluster officers.
- Any guarantee that a loan requested by your members will be approved.
- Permission to collect savings before the office has confirmed the cluster.
- Cover for money that goes missing between a cluster's hands and the union's.
How to apply
- Write to the union office at requizacooperative@gmail.com and say where you are: town, local government area and state.
- Name the people who will hold office — chairperson, financial secretary, treasurer — and how many founding members you have.
- Say where and at what time you will meet. It must be Saturday at 5:00pm; give the place.
- The office replies. If it agrees, it confirms the cluster and issues the financial secretary's access code.
- Every founding member registers individually, so each one has a membership number and a back office of their own.
- Hold your first meeting, take the first savings, and read the entries back before anybody goes home.
Before you collect anybody's money
A new cluster is the easiest place for a savings union to be damaged, and the people who lose out are the members who trusted a neighbour. Until the office has confirmed your cluster in writing and issued the access code, do not take savings in the union's name, do not promise anybody the 30% annual interest — which the terms pay only on savings that have run weekly and uninterrupted for twelve months — and do not tell anybody their money is protected. Everything the union promises is in the operational terms, and it applies only to savings that are properly recorded.
Where to go next
Read on before your first Saturday
- How membership works What the union asks, what you get, and what membership does not do. Read
- Savings, shares, loans and dividends Every rate the union publishes, with the condition attached to it. Read
- Streams of Income Business School Find the school nearest you and attend. Read
- Operational terms The formal terms that govern every cluster in the union. Read
- Questions members ask Including the awkward ones about risk, withdrawal and who holds the money. Read
There is a Saturday meeting near you, or there is one to start
Ask the office where the nearest cluster meets, or tell us you want to open one where you are.