Report on Women Empowerment Project

There are 5 projects currently running:
1. The Piggery Project
2. The Poultry Project
3. The Seed Loan Project
4. The Village Bank Project
5. The Craft Project

(1) The Piggery Project

We started with a few pigs but right now we have many. Women have been able to receive a pig.

After doing a monthly check up, most of the pigs look healthy and have received their medicines. The only problem is with feeding.

Some women lost pigs due to different reasons. They have been unable to replace them in the specified time of two months. They said they would replace them after this harvest season and after they get loans from our village bank.

In total 10 pigs have died and 37 pigs are alive. There are 4 zones that do not have pigs yet. We hope to expand and provide every zone with pigs. When the pigs have offspring, we will be able to extend the distribution among the others.

I was also able to draft up an agreement in Luganda for the women. The document is designed to clarify the rules of the project and avoid any misinterpretation amongst the participants.

(2) The Poultry Project

This project was exceptionally popular in the beginning. But over time a reduction in the number of people carrying out this project was evident.

Right now there are 5 women actively participating in this project. Upon their request, we sold their layer chickens and bought them 100 broilers instead. They received them on the 4th of May. There have been a lot of challenges with this project but we hope to improve these coming months.

(3) The Seed Loan Project

This project just started this year and it involves giving seeds to women. We gave each woman 15kgs of bean seeds or 15kgs of ground nuts.

When a woman is given 15 kilograms, she is supposed to return 17 kilograms (she adds 2 kilograms on the original amount that she was given).

This month we are going to carry out a garden inspection for all those who received the seeds and we expect them to bring back the seeds between June and July (this is the harvest period)

(4) The Village Bank Project (a.k.a. Savings And Loans Project)

At the beginning of this month, the women requested that they be trained in saving and borrowing. We were able to organise a training session by the Micro enterprise Development, a partner with World Vision.

But the women felt that it was too soon for them to join such a banking institution, so we organised a grassroots bank.

This is a program being taught by the Swedish Cooperative Center in partnership with the Government of Uganda. We organized a 2-day training session on how this bank works.

On the 28th of April, our village bank started with 84 members and we were able to give loans to 20 women on that day. There is no collateral but we emphasize commitment, hard work and development for all our members.

(5) The Craft Project

This was started last year and it is a very strong income generating activity for the women.

We arranged a trip to Kampala to visit craft places; they were able to learn a lot and improve their craft making. In the future we’d like the women to learn more crafts to increase on their income.

We would also like to thank URF Canada for helping us find a market for our crafts.

Implications For The Future

We are going to start a new project involving making energy saving stoves and this coming month we hope to start our Clean Home Project (every home will have a tip tap for washing hands after using the toilet and wood rack for drying utensils).