To be part of the 1% Network this February, calculate 1% of 1 months income and donate here! Thanks!!

This month our partner is Self Help Africa. This was formed in 2008 from a merger between two like-minded charities, ‘Harvest Help’ from the UK and ‘Self Help Development International’ from Ireland. Both were founded in mid-1980s in response to the Ethiopian famine and the droughts that plagued many central African countries. Their aim is to work on long term projects in sub-Saharan Africa to ward off such crises, by creating robust self-sustaining communities. Self Help Africa has many strands to its work and our money this month will go to one on micro-finance: SACCOs (Savings and Credit Co-ops). 

These initiatives operate in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda. It is estimated that to date these have supported over 1,400 East African women in setting up sustainable income generation for their families and local communities. The principle is simple: it operates like a Credit Union, with each applicant having to demonstrate in their application their ability to save funds in the preceding months. The activities, already sustained by these women, include small trading schemes, sewing and textile production, catering, animal rearing and bee-keeping.  As well as the loan being offered to kick-start such activity, the women are provided with initial training about how to manage their business and, where necessary, literacy and numeracy skills are also enhanced.

To give you a sense about what our contribution will support, £1,200 would cover the cost of setting up eight SACCOs with a total membership of over 1,200 women: just £1 for every member. These women live on the edge of poverty and access to loans would normally be out of the question for them in their lives. Loans of about £50 are awarded after the member has been saving for a minimum of 1 year, and are used for business activities such as small shops, cafes, sewing machines for tailoring businesses and seed purchase. The money raised by their small businesses and trades is typically spent on sending children to school, adding metal roofing to their homes and buying medicines. To bring this alive below is a typical success story.

Mirabu Mokoda used her first loan from the village SACCO to develop a small retail trading post in Bugobi and returned to the co-op for further loan support when she decided to trade agricultural inputs and produce in her business, alongside household goods. She has six young children and Mirabu says that until the SACCO was created she would have had no chance of borrowing money for any purpose at all. “I had nothing that I could offer as security against a loan, but now I have a business, and have also started my own herd of goats”. She is very clear that the creation by Self Help Africa of a micro-finance programme has allowed dozens of women in Bugobi to get their feet onto the ladder and move beyond subsistence.