Ebukya
Helping to finance income generating activities in Uganda
Aim: To enable about 600 rural women, along with their families, to achieve economic self-sufficiency through income generating activities.
Background: The majority of direct beneficiaries are subsistence farmers, surviving on less than one dollar a day. They are described as the “active poor” meaning they have an economic activity but are constrained by many factors including lack of access to credit and technical know how.
The Programme: The programme centres on the creation of a revolving credit fund to enable members of the Ebukya Women’s Project to achieve economic self-sufficiency through income generating activities. It is estimated that six hundred beneficiaries, along with their families, will benefit from the scheme. This does not include those who participate in the women’s groups and receive training, including training related to income generation; but who do not take out micro-loans.
Partners: Ebukya started as a group of women from varied backgrounds who wanted to work together to better their lives, their economic circumstances and the educational opportunities of their children.
The cooperative loans seeds, pesticides and tools, such as ploughs to each village women’s group. It collects and sells the produce on behalf of the women, thus ensuring the best price. Members receive their sale price, minus a small commission that goes to sustain the cooperative. They are encouraged to save and reinvest some of the income.
Ebukya has good relations with local government and members of the local business community. It has also received support from international NGOs such as the
Outcome: The project targets at least 200 beneficiaries per annum, of whom at least 65% are to be women and youth. This gender bias is due to the fact that the women are even more economically disadvantaged than other groups. While women are responsible for about 80% of all rural output, it is generally men who control the means of production.
Evaluation: Tzedek’s relationship with Ebukya goes back several years. Tzedek funded the construction of their school building and then an extension, completed in 2004. The project has been visited by a number of Tzedek volunteers. The most recent of these visits took place in 2006, just prior to the commencement of the current project (see the report here). As with all organizations funded by Tzedek, Ebukya are required to submit comprehensive reports at least twice a year.
Funds Required: For the agricultural cooperative Tzedek approved a grant of £9,000, to be paid in three installments: £3,500 in the first year and £2,000 in each of the following years.
Tzedek’s Overseas Projects Team member, Ilana Levene, visited Ebukya whilst working in Uganda in 2006. These are her thoughts:
"The thing that impressed me most about Ebukya's chairwoman, Rebecca Ereemye, is that she has an overwhelming desire to empower others to take their future into their own hands.
Each village group that joins the agricultural cooperative is encouraged to set their own agenda for an economic project they want to do, which may or may not be agricultural. Rebecca guides the women to be realistic; we met a group who wanted to use their passion for traditional dancing as their way of generating income.
By encouraging this and finding ways to make it earn a small amount of money she harnessed their energy into also working in the fields to earn more money. With their first dividends they are now trying to start rearing pigs too.
This group included teenage girls with their babies on their backs, who overwhelmed me with their enthusiasm and pride in their crops and in the fact that they had been able to change their situation by their own efforts. They danced for us and sang about how they had been able to develop themselves and buy shoes, or even watches.
Rebecca has a fantastic approach to her relationship with Tzedek; she calls us her partners and really wants to give back both to Tzedek directly and to the other organisations that Tzedek funds. She even wants to send some of the group’s produce to a Kenyan orphanage that she heard Tzedek supports. She welcomed me as a friend and emphasised to everyone that I was there to learn from them as much as to give anything. She insisted I try my hand at milking cows, making pottery, digging mounds for sweet potatoes, harvesting rice, juicing passion fruit and grinding millet flour. She made me realise the immense value of these practical skills that we have so little knowledge of in Britain.
When staying with Rebecca, her mother and her grandmother I was struck by the relevance of the words of ‘Eishet Chayil’, a section of the Book of Proverbs traditionally sung to a Jewish wife before the Friday night meal. “Who can find a woman of worth? For her price is far above rubies... she considers a field and buys it: with the fruit of her hands she plants... she stretches out her hand to the poor, reaches forth to the needy... strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the time to come... let her deeds praise her“.
What a strange experience to have a three-way rendition of Eishet Chayil in Hebrew, English and Luganda, whilst sitting on woven palm mats waiting to eat a meal of millet bread and peanut sauce in a rural village in the middle of Uganda..."
We are still seeking funds for this project: make a donation.
