SEM is a partnership between a team of US-based volunteers and the Global Ecovillage Network, Senegal (GENSEN), an association of thirty-eight Senegalese villages that collaborate to promote environmentally friendly development and integrate modern information technology with traditional Senegalese values.

In the summer of 2006, representatives of the GENSEN member villages worked together to design a management framework to enable SEM to extend its microfinance services to all thirty-eight villages of the GENSEN network. The village representatives created a microcredit committee to oversee program management and review loan requests from member villages. The committee is composed of one representative from each of GENSEN's seven principal regions (Dakar, Thiès, Saint Louis, Diourbel, Fatick, Ziguinchor, and Tambacounda). Any women's savings and credit group or other association of villagers in the GENSEN network that wishes to take out a group loan for income-generating activities is invited to submit their investment proposal to the microcredit committee. The microcredit committee meets quarterly to evaluate loan applications on the basis of business plan soundness, personal reputation and reliability of the group leaders and members, credit history if any, and conformity with SEM's mission of promoting sustainable development. Low-income groups in remote areas who lack access to other sources of loans are explicitly targeted. Over 80% of SEM's clients are women.

The GENSEN network operates on the basis of collaborative values, strong personal relationships and mutual trust. The network is small enough that most members know each other well, and many have been working together for years on various environmental and community development projects. Often, at least one representative on the microcredit committee is familiar with the leader of a village association who submits a loan request, and the committee can thus evaluate her reliability without an extensive background check. When a group loan is granted, peer pressure and the need to maintain one's local reputation ensure that the vast majority of borrowers make every effort to fulfill their repayment obligations.

SEM offers loans only to groups rather than to individuals. This policy not only streamlines management costs, but also reduces the risk of default as the members of a group mutually guarantee each other's loans and exert peer pressure on each other to repay. Most of the GENSEN villages are home to numerous women's savings and credit associations, and there is no limit to the number of groups per village that may apply for loans. SEM loans are granted to the group as a whole and signed for by the group's leader, who is responsible for ensuring that the loan is repaid on time and in full. Some groups invest their loan in a collective enterprise, while others divide their loan into smaller amounts which are lent to individual members for their own microenterprise activities.