KISORO:Two Women’s Savings Groups in Nyakabande Sub County Receive Funding,credit goes to Imbabazi Center for Women and Children

 

Two women’s savings groups in Nyakabande Sub County on Friday 11th October 2024, received a total of five million shillings from the Imbabazi Center for Women and Children, aimed at boosting their livelihoods. This funding is in addition to the 15 million shillings already circulating among the groups at the Imbabazi Center in Nyakabande village, Gisorora parish.

Mrs. Robbinah Hakiza, founder and director of the Imbabazi Center, highlighted the importance of collaboration, saying that the groups meet regularly to save and take small loans from their savings to enhance their well-being both at home and in their businesses.

Catherine Manirahari Ninsima, who also works with the organization, encouraged parents to invest their funds in productive projects by engaging in business and agriculture.

Beneficiaries expressed their gratitude to Robbinah Hakiza for her unwavering support and dedication to developing Kisoro through education.

What Robbinah Hakiza says about Imbabazi Center for Women and Children?

Mrs. Robbinah Hakiza-Founder and Director Imbabazi Center for Women and Children said the organization adopted the Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) micro-savings methodology that was rolled out in Uganda by Care International in 1998. She says this was after registering multiple failures using other micro-credit scheme methodologies, where members saved money and shared all savings at the end of the year. ‘There was no social, economic impact registered in members households, rather sharing all savings created poverty in homes and to some extend accelerated GBV-Gender Based Violence because of some women having to sell domestic livestock like goats to pay back loans’’,Robbina says.

Robbinah Hakiza  added that the organization use the Do-no-harm tool when assessing and measuring impact of our activities and help us identify negative unintended consequences that might arise because of the support we are giving to our people.

‘After realising that sharing all members savings annually was having negative consequences we had to act. Our core thematic area at ICWAC is education. We believe that when families are financially empowered particularly women and mothers, they are far more likely to invest in their children's education’’.she added

She said through their partners, they embarked to training our participants on adult literacy education including financial management for Micro, small and medium enterprises-MSMEs, and enterprise selection and eventually introduced the VSLA methodology. The purpose of introducing the VSLA methodology was to provide simple savings and loan facilities to our children’s caregivers 95% of whom are widows who didn’t have easy access to formal financial services.  

Robbina said that the organization has three groups of women so far of about 45 members each, who are direct members of Gisorora Twiyubake Womens group under Imbabazi Center for Women and Children, and all groups combined have a current loan portfolio of over 30m Ugx.

The groups meet regularly to save together and take small loans from those savings. The activities of the groups run in cycles of one year, after which the accumulated savings and the loan profits are ploughed back to the members as new loans for the next cycle. The groups have welfare bags or social fund that is used for personal emergencies.

On October 11, and Imbabazi Center for Women and Children boosted the Credit portfolio of two of the savings groups with additional 5m Ugx. This will go along way to increasing on the loan portfolio and for internal and external lending. Our plan as an organization is to roll out our activities and support additional organized groups in other sub-counties of Bufumbira East and beyond.