SCA Program Providing Education Opportunities for Children and New Hope for Rafiki Girls
Rafiki Girls SCA Training Session
June has been a very busy month with following up on group formations and assisting groups with their policy formulation. We are very pleased with the progress made so far and the enthusiasm shown by those who have already formed groups and started saving. Those who have started saving speak of how they are certain the savings groups will help them achieve their various goals and how exciting it is for them to see how their groups impact both their physical and spiritual lives.
What has been particularly encouraging for us is to see how young people in our Church have taken the lead in implementing this program and how their groups are not just self- serving but they are using them as a platform to minister to other needy people’s needs. An example is the “Educate A Child” group which is a group of ten young people who have come together to each save a minimum of $25 per month to help educate poor children from very poor communities. 16 groups have been formed so far and of those, 9 are made up of the youth.
On the 9th of June we held a training workshop targeted at an initial 50 girls from the Rafiki Girls’ Centre. These are girls from very poor backgrounds and who are vulnerable in so many ways due to lack. At the Centre they are equipped with vocational skills to help them transform their lives by applying the skills learnt to earn a living through either being formally employed or starting their own income generating projects. However, the challenge that most girls have faced upon completion of training is lack of start-up capital for income generating projects and due to the very high unemployment levels in the country it has been difficult for them to be absorbed into the formal job market. We have introduced the Savings Program to these girls in the hope that they will save in groups and finance their income generating projects which will enable them to break free from the poverty that has bound them for the greater part of their lives. They will be empowered to transform not just themselves and their families but also help to alleviate poverty in the communities that they come from because these groups have the potential to alleviate poverty household by household as it spreads among community members.
37 past and present Rafiki girls attended the training. They were excited about the idea of being able to save from the little they have and help each other start income generating projects. They are all very poor but we encouraged them saying that they can save as little as a dollar each in groups of ten and be able to invest that initial $10. They would then work towards growing it through selling very small items like bananas and sweets until they had saved enough to venture into the projects that are in line with the skills they acquired at Rafiki like Cutting and Designing and Hotel and Catering. By the end of training they were all positive that the groups would work for them and to date 31 of the 37 who attended have already formed groups. The others are still trying to decide on which groups to join as the groups formed have all come up with different saving amounts and turnover periods depending on financial status. They are also spreading the word to the students who could not attend the training for various reasons. We are very encouraged by their positive response.
To date 16 groups with an average of 5 people per group have been formed among the Central Baptist Church members and ministries. Whilst other groups have the total number of people that they would want to constitute their groups, others are still looking for more members to join their groups. Both methods of saving, the Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and the Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs) are being employed by the groups. One group has also been using both methods and has done so successfully.
Upcoming Events
- Training at Hatfield Baptist Church on the 25th of June. This will be our first training outside CBC although members from other churches were invited to attend the 2nd training at CBC. The intention now is to spread the program as widely as possible and reach out to more beneficiaries.
- Training at City Presbyterian Church in Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe on the 15th of July 2011. We have been invited to launch the program at this church and will be introducing the program to them and training them to run the Savings Program. We thank God for this opportunity that will see the Program spread to other churches outside the Baptist Church and also to other towns. We pray that we will soon be able to spread it to rural Zimbabwe were the need for such an empowering and a sustainable program is great because of the terrible levels of poverty there.
We thank God for the growth of the program and all the positive response that we have had so far. Thank God for the lives that will be transformed through this work. We pray that He will continue to guide us and direct us in the ways we should go to reach all who need the program and that all our training plans will go on well. We pray that more avenues continue to open for us as we work to succeed in alleviating poverty and removing suffering from our communities. We are grateful for all the support that we continue to receive from all who seek to see this program flourish.
Posted by Caroline Mugochi
