Micro-financing
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The Ssubi Foundation offers micro-financing opportunities to the parents or caregivers of sponsored children.
The Ssubi Foundation has provided four mothers of sponsor children with micro loans to help improve the home life of sponsor children. One of the mothers/caregivers opened a beauty salon in 2007, four year later she is still in business and now has two employees. One of the mothers sells food items in the market and continues to pay back her loan. The Ssubi Foundation still supports the children of these two mothers. The other two mothers are no longer contributing to the program. One of the lessons we learned as a foundation is that accountability is really important, a group situation provides an incentive for borrows to pay back, especially when they can see how the money they pay back provides opportunities for others within the community.
In 2009, the foundation chose to support a small established women's group, connected to one of our schools though teacher and parent participation in the group. The Rwot Womens Group, established to help women become financially independent and strong was provided with seed money to help grow their small microloan program. When we returned a year later to see how they were doing, we were seriously impressed; they had doubled the value of the seed money we provided them with. The group is made up of 20 women from all different educational levels, one has a master's degree, while others have never been to school. The women are encouraged to become financially independent by saving every week, helping each other out in times of need and participating in educational workshops. The micro loan program is only one component of the group's services, but the strong foundation of the group helped to make it a success.
There are 20 different examples of how these women have successfully used the micro-loaning component, here is Grace's story….Grace was accepted into a business administration program at one of the local universities but she did not have the money to pay school fees. As a member of the Rwot Womens Group, she applied for a loan to pay her school fees and to start a small snack making business to enable her to generate an income while she was in school. She borrowed 500,000 Ugs (approximately $250.00 Can) which she used 300,000 Ugs to pay for school fees and 200,000 Ugs to start her snack making business. Within 6 months she was able to pay the loan back to the group and her business is still going well a year later.
In 2010, we provide the Rwot Women's Group with a loan to enable more members to borrow at any one time.
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