While visiting relatives in a nearby village in Northern Mali, Assiata Ongoiba was surprised to see tourists flocking to buy carved statues and masks, beaded gourds, and hand-woven materials at a crafts fair organized by local women. Her proposal to the women's group back home in the small Dogon village of Fombori that they should develop an artisan center evolved over time into a locally-based museum and a unique, sustainable microcredit program that preserves traditional culture and artifacts while supporting local economic development.

The CultureBank's unique approach in blending cultural conservation and microcredit has received many awards for its innovative design. By extending loans to participants who place cultural objects in the CultureBank as collateral, the bank turned Fombori's cultural heritage into a vital economic resource. Rather than selling irreplaceable antiques to dealers or tourists, people in Fombori use their valuable heirlooms to get loans that generate income that helps support children's education and family health care.

“When I was younger we had so many things here,” an elderly Fombori man explained to a visiting researcher. “There were all kinds of statues that people used to make sacrifices, but I hardly see those anymore. People have sold them for money. If you went up on the cliff in those days you could find objects left by the Tellem in the rock spaces. Now there are still bones there, but the objects are gone. I am glad that we have a CultureBank now because it is a place where we can save what is left here and remember the old ways. I was surprised when I saw so many things in the CultureBank. People used to keep those things hidden away in their houses where no one could see them. Now we have a place that helps us look back and reflect on our past history instead of losing it.”

Fombori is a small Dogon village whose 1,080 residents live in 42 extended family households, relying on subsistence agriculture and selling products at a weekly market in the nearby Fulani town of Douentza. As villagers moved away from their traditional religious beliefs, Dogon ritual and ceremonial objects ceased to be valued highly, and many people began to sell family heirlooms to supplement their meager cash earnings.

Finding a way to make a museum valuable

The artisan centre opened in 1992 by the Women’s Association of Fombori, led by Hawa Ongoiba and Aissata Ongoiba, with help from a USC Canada project based in Douentza, was decorated with Dogon objects and displayed various arts including cloth, jewelry, and statues. The center, which also offered lodging for visitors, evolved into a community museum in 1995, but soon ran into challenges. Villagers were reluctant to lend their objects, so the collection was small, and because Fombori is not on a main tourist route, admission fees were minimal.

In 1997, with help from Peace Corps volunteer Todd Crosby, the community thought of a way to make the museum both financially viable and valuable for the community. They combined cultural conservation with a microcredit initiative aimed at increasing villagers’ access to credit for income-generating activities, turning the museum into a “CultureBank” - figuratively and literally.

In exchange for every object placed in the CultureBank of Fombori, individuals become eligible for small business loans over a four to six month period at 3% interest per month. The loan amount depends on the object's historical value. When the loan is repaid on time, borrowers can renew their loan for an equal or greater amount. Individuals still own the objects, and can use them whenever they need to, as long as they return them to the CultureBank when not in use.

Formally begun in May 1997 by a General Assembly of community members headed by the village chief, the CultureBank began making loans in December 1997 using a small initial fund of $391 USD obtained from a grant from USAID Mali. Additional funding was later contributed by the West African Museums Project (WAMP) in Dakar, Senegal, and private contributions from the United States through the Peace Corps Partnership program. Since 1999, the CultureBank has generated loan funds exclusively from loan interest and revenues from tourism without any outside donor assistance. Eleven volunteers from Fombori oversee all management activities.

While providing microcredit, the CultureBank has amassed a collection of 440 objects, displayed in three main galleries – one containing objects that reflect the culture and history of the Dogon and Tellem peoples, one reflecting women’s roles in Dogon culture; and one reflecting men’s roles. Pieces in the CultureBank come from thirteen surrounding villages, as men from Fombori often marry women from other villages and bring them to settle in the husband’s home village, according to custom.

Through its community activities, the CultureBank has established a vital presence as a community center where people can benefit from classes, workshops, and other activities that build local capacity and knowledge, increase social capital, and create pride in cultural heritage. Activities have included literacy courses in the Dogon dialect; artisan and conservation workshops; theatre troupes for youth; and community festivals drawing thousands of participants from 21 surrounding villages. In 1997 and 1998, community members organized a rain festival at the start of the rainy season, featuring older women who reminded people of Dogon customs and morals through their dancing, singing and recounting of Dogon tales.

An archive for future generations

The CultureBank has conducted historical research and documentation of Fombori’s cultural heritage, including recording oral histories in the local dialect and translating them into French, English, and Fulfulde. Stories of Fombori’s origins, Dogon folk tales, and information about the pieces in the CultureBank collection stored in the library are both an important cultural resource for the community and an archive for future generations. The CultureBank also has provided training in how to start a similar institution for seven other villages in the region.

Since its opening, the CultureBank has received more than 2,000 visitors from around the world, who pay a small admission fee for a guided tour and a visit to the nearby Tellem cliff dwellings, and support local artisans by purchasing artisan goods such as bogolan and indigo cloth, Dogon masks, statues, stools, pottery, and bronze figures in the CultureBank boutique. The CultureBank sells these items on a consignment basis, earning a 10% commission which funds community activities. None of the antique pieces can be purchased under any circumstances.

Women make up 60% of the beneficiaries. “Before the CultureBank, it was very hard for women to get loans for their commerce,” says the Women’s Association of Fombori. “Now we are able to use the objects we have inherited from our mothers and grandmothers to obtain loans. This is very important for us because not only are we protecting our inheritance in the CultureBank, but we are able to sell more items in the weekly market and earn extra income to support our families.”

The CultureBank has sparked interest in local history and intergenerational dialogue as village elders share their knowledge with younger people, has built cultural pride, and has increased social capital in the community and region.”We conserve our cultural heritage to know the past, the present, and the future,” says the president of the CultureBank. “It is our patrimony and the importance of this heritage cannot be underestimated. Our culture is a resource that we must protect and the CultureBank is a way for us to do that.  I counsel the youth of this village and elsewhere to take care of this CultureBank and hold onto all that we have worked hard to conserve in Fombori.

Since the Fombori CultureBank was created, the Peace Corps has developed a manual for Culture Bank development, and six other villages have written proposals for their own Culture Bank. “Thus, the simple concept of a crafts fair was developed at the local level by the women's group of Fombori into a sophisticated tool for development,” says Crosby, who founded the non-profit African Cultural Conservation Fund (ACCF) in 2000 to promote and expand the CultureBank model and other cultural conservation initiatives in Africa.

In 2001, ACCF was awarded a first place prize in the World Bank's "Development Marketplace" competition, and Crosby ran a project to create a core network of CultureBanks in Mali that secured follow-on funding from the World Bank President's Fund. “The Culture Bank has become a way to transform the cultural resources of the community into a lasting economic resource without relying on tourism, illicit sale of artifacts or perpetual outside funding," Crosby says. "It has also become a means of cultivating awareness and respect for tradition and making cultural preservation financially sustainable in this isolated, rural community":

This article was prepared from several sources: “Conserving Cultural Heritage with Microcredit: An Impact Assessment of the CultureBank in Fombori, Mali,” a 2002 study done for the African Cultural Conservation Fund, Bamako, Mali, by Tara F. Deubel and Dr. Mamadou Baro of the University of Arizona's Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (the picture of the CultureBank at the top right comes from this study); The Culture Bank: A Community-Based Museum Provides Micro-Credit, by Todd Vincent Crosby and Katrinka Ebbe; a paper entitled “Public access to museums in Mali and Ghana” by Sophie Mew, found on pages 98-108, in Bulletin 387 Tropenmuseum, Can we make a difference? Museums, society and development in North and South, Paul Voogt (ed), the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam; and information on a presentation by Todd Crosby entitled “The CultureBank Project in Mali and The New Field of Cultural Development “, sponsored by the Arts, Culture and Communities in International Development (ACCID) The pictures in the middle and bottom left come from the ACCID website.