One Year Away

Joseph

I never thought that I would be analyzing the business merits of a vegetable stall or road-side tailor; but  that’s exactly what I found myself doing in Uganda.  I spent a lot of time talking to women about their businesses, all with less than $5 a day in revenue.  The foster home where we volunteered in Uganda is part of Rejoice Outreach International, a community based organization that also has other activities including the Women Empowerment Program (WEP).  It tries to help village women become “empowered” by giving them courses, business training and access to small loans.

These women are very poor and are supporting large families which usually include a few children of  relatives who have died of AIDS.   Uganda has the youngest population of any country on Earth – the median age is 15 years old and 20% of children in Uganda are orphans. 

The women use the small loans to start businesses that will help them to support their large families.  The loans are small for us in the West, $30 to $100, but represent capital that the women would never be able to accumulate or borrow on their own.  The loans must be repaid in full within 6 months to a year.  I worked on writing profiles of the women and their businesses to be put on a future WEP website.  I spent several days zipping around the villages near Jinja interviewing and photographing women entrepreneurs, with one of the older children from the foster home acting as interpreter.

While I was doing the research into the businesses I became interested in poultry farming.  It seemed that it was relatively easy to start, inexpensive and the returns were high – so Penny and I went to interview a poultry farmer who lived next door to the foster home.  The farmer told us that the two secrets to success were getting proper training in poultry raising and avoiding chicken theft.  When we got back I ran some numbers and was impressed with the returns you could get.  We spoke to Stephen, the director of WEP, who said that a couple of the women in the program were good candidates for a poultry operation.

So as a parting gift when we left Uganda, Penny and I gave enough money to fund two loans to start poultry farming operations and also to hire a poultry trainer to teach them the intricacies of raising chickens.  The loans will be repaid to WEP in less than a year and will then be loaned out to another two women, and the cycle will continue.  In a break with tradition, I asked that interest be charged and paid to WEP so that a reserve could be built up in case one of the loans defaults or to cover administrative costs.   Because there’s no expensive overhead, the interest rate will only be half of the going micro-loan rate in Africa and should be easily covered by the profits.

Micro-lending is becoming a powerful tool to help poor people around the world lift themselves from poverty.  It’s also much more in-line with my capitalist tendencies than one-time handouts.  If you’re interested in finding out more or making a donation to fund some loans for women entrepreneurs in Uganda please email me and I’ll put you in touch with the director of WEP.