During the many months long Covid-19 lock-downs, a young man under our mentorship, Robert Oluka, amazed us with his innovation and generosity when he saved tens of women in his village in Ochelakur Sub-County, in Kalaki District in North-Eastern Uganda.
He did so by using his meagre savings to give small and very low interest loans to women so that they could eke out livelihoods from market vending, farming and artisan work like tailoring. We are talking tiny little loans like Ug. Shs. 10,000 (less than US$ 3), which tiny loans made such huge impacts in the lives of the borrowers.
The beneficiary women typically needed money, for example, to buy food items, such as dried silver fish (mukene), tomatoes, onions, etc., which food items they would re-sale in smaller quantities by the roadside and or at market stalls. Or for the farmers, money to pay for labourers to do timely planting, weeding, harvesting and post-harvest handling of produce for sale.
For the tailor, money to buy fabric and thread so she could make affordable garments to sell and earn a living.
Ochelakur sub-county and, in fact, the whole of Kalaki District has no banking services nor even the formal micro-finance institutions. The only source of finance for the people of Ochelakur is savings and credit groups, but which groups have insufficient savings funds and therefor loan funds; and moreover which lend at fairly high interest rates.
It is our conviction that Innovators, such as Robert, need our support so they can make wider and deeper positive impact at the grassroots, where it is need the most. Please click here, make a donation of US$ 10 (Ug. Shs. 40,000) and enable three disadvantaged women market vendors to access weekly loans to buy produce to sell and earn money to feed their families.
And If you donate up to $50 during the GlobalGiving Little By Little campaign, now on-going from 3-7 April, your gift will be matched at 50% and have an even bigger impact!
In the alternative, you could make a mobile money payment directly to Robert Oluka on telephone +256 752 469 035. No donation is too little. Thank you so much for your generosity.
CPAR Uganda Ltd 