This past summer, 30 widowed mothers and caregivers of children in the school took a business course taught by the church administrator Vickie. Vickie has her degree in marketing and is working on her second degree in accounting. Her husband, Fred, owns the little hardware store in Banda where we get a lot of our building materials. Vickie taught the course a few times a week for a month and focused on such topics as customer service, building a clientele, increasing capital, and most importantly here in Uganda; budgeting and saving. 

 

Tim and I received business proposals from these ladies, some had a lot of writing on an organized chart, others had only a line or two on a scrap of paper. None were very clear, were mostly unspecific and didn’t give us much to go on.   I created a new proposal form for them; basic enough for them to understand but detailed enough for us to get a sense of  either the business they already had but wanted to increase, or the business they wanted to start from scratch. Our budget to start was around 800,000 shillings or $450 Canadian dollars. The lowest loan proposal was for 50,000 shillings, the highest was 600,000 shillings. 

 

We cross referenced the names of the loan applicants with the 38 widows that we are currently providing food supplementation for to see if any of these very needy women had applied. Many had, so we consulted with Pastor Hummer and Vickie to choose the first group of 5 to receive a micro loan. 

 

Each woman signed a contract stating the amount borrowed and the terms of repayment set by Vickie to co-inside with the course she taught. These would be interest free loans and the only conditions were that they follow the repayment terms and that once the loan was paid back, that they would contribute in some small way to their children’s education at the school, either by volunteering to do small jobs or donating a small amount of food, even if it was just one tomato. This is a huge lesson for them, and something they are not accustomed to. They have grown up in a culture of “every man or women for themselves” and do not want to share or contribute to their community at all. They have endured such hardships in their own lives, that they do not understand the value of helping others in need. Tim keeps saying “if I can only show them how to love each other, then I will have done my job here”. We try to lead by example, getting our hands dirty by building, chopping vegetables with the cook, washing dishes at school, etc. We have already noticed a difference in the staff, they have started to do the same.

 

Our first loan recipient was Irene. Irene has a small snack stand near the school. She sells deep fried cassava, pancakes, chapattis and other snacks. She now has a few contracts at local schools, selling snacks at break time. She also sells charcoal which everyone here uses for cooking fuel. Irene has one child living with her and attending our school, and she has another three living with Grandma in her home village because she can’t afford to keep them here. She is hoping that with her new and improved business, that she will be able to have them join her soon. This has become such a familiar story.

 

Next was Juliet. Juliet has been able to greatly expand her store’s inventory with her micro loan. She sells all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as salt, sugar, spices, homemade brooms and lots of other items. Juliet has one child in Rays of Hope school, another that will be starting kindergarten next year and two older children that currently do not go to school at all. When Pastor Hummer chose these kids initially, he usually chose one to attend from a family. That child then goes home and teaches the others. We think we need to revamp the system before the next school year starts next February, these kids need to be in school. 

 

The third loan went to Margaret. Margaret is HIV positive and is one of the widows that receives eggs, along with beans and posho in our food supplementation program to ensure that she has the protein needed to go with her HIV medicine. Her business is at a nice local primary school. She has a little canteen there where she sells snacks, sweets and drinks to the students and staff. Margaret also has one child at our school, and two other children that attend another school. She currently lives with her Aunt.

 

Goretti got loan number four, the smallest of the loans. She requested only 50,000 shillings or about $28 Canadian to buy the pots and supplies needed to have a little cassava stand in a narrow walkway which pedestrians have to walk through, great location. Goretti is another widow on our food program, and is also HIV positive. She has 4 children, 1 at our school, 1 at another school in her home village and two little ones that are still too young for school. Her youngest, a boy about 2 years old, is also HIV positive and goes for treatment with his mother. The one room in her house is so small that she can hardly close the door when they are all lying down. We have put her on our list of women that need a new house, the hard part is finding the land. It is much easier when they already own a house that we fix up. We put Hummer on the search for land. Land is hugely hard to come by because families have owned it for generations and do not want to part with even a tiny 10X10 foot plot.

 

The final loan went to Immaculate. Immaculate sells tomatoes, onions and charcoal at her booth at a busy market. She has one child that attends the school and her stand was closed the day we went to take some video. She was back in her home village where she had a death in the family. 

 

The loan repayments are made each Wednesday to Vickie who then returns the money to us so that we can re-loan it again once these are paid off. They made no payments for three weeks after receiving their loans to get somewhat established. We have just passed the third week of repayment and all five widows have paid on time and in full each week. Vickie has also set up a savings and budgeting schedule for them and visits their businesses each week to offer encouragement and support. 

 

These women just needed a little boost to buy more inventory or “increase capital” as they keep saying. When their business is too little, they can never make enough profit to increase their stock and therefore barely earn enough to survive. 

 

Our plan is to wait to give more micro loans until these five loans are repaid in another 13 weeks. We want to work out any kinks with this program and see what the end results are and how these women respond to helping out with the school and the other needy women in their church. It is neat that the same loan money can be used over and over again to help these women establish better lives for themselves and their kids! The same couple that gave money for the piggy project also funded these micro loans. Click on the video to see some footage of their businesses! As I mentioned, Immaculate (loan number 5) was absent and we didn’t get much video of Gorreti (loan number 4), her little son was crying too hard, the white guy really scared him!!!