GENERAL OVERVIEW
Zambia has a young population, with 65% under age 25, and over half 52% are under the age of 18, and the country’s Seventh National Development Plan (2017-2021), recognizes that Zambian youth can, with effective support, play a significant role in realizing its Vision 2030 to transition from a low to middle income country by 2030. Reports show that poverty among youths is very high and almost half of the households are headed by youth/child headed are aged between 15yrs to 24yrs, or ages 25 to 34yrs, are poor. Most rural youths are poor and from 15 to 24 year olds, 59.6% are poor, compared to 20.8% of their urban counterparts. Similarly, among older rural youth, ages 25 to 34yrs, almost three quarters (73.0%) live in poverty,
CCCYD under the sponsorship of DSIK embarked on conducting and enhancing trainings in Ndola to offer financial literacy education and actively promoting business men and women in the District.
The Micro – Business simulation trainings were very interactive and practical which gave the participants an open mind to be able to start thinking outside the box business wise and also having a platform to express themselves and relate their learnings to their real life situations in their businesses. It was attended mostly by the women coming from different business lines and backgrounds and experiences in conducting different business in the area. The know-How sessions conducted were on the importance of business growths, diversification, investments and also the importance of separating business money from personal money even when you are the owner of the business, you just have to be financial displined.
FORMATION OF GROUPS
The formation of groups has been the same all way through CCCYD trainings in all districts of Northwestern and other Province. How groups are formed is done in such a way that members are put in groups randomly, Numbers from 1 to 4 would be given to participants and those who got ones would be put in the same group and the same is done for the other numbers 2 to 4. Gender and education levels in the grouping was highly considered so as not to be gender biased or put illiterate participants in one group because the trainings required someone who can read and write and also any of the group members to act as a groups’ secretary.
Charity Centre for Children requested for two micro business simulation training to be conducted in Kasempa District.
Among the two groups trained, one group was for persons living with disabilities which was conducted at Kasempa Teachers Resource Centre. There are different types of disabilities as follows: Vision Impairment, deaf or hard of hearing, mental health conditions, intellectual disability, acquired brain injury, autism spectrum disorder and physical disability. Therefore, in order to enhance financial inclusion and also understand the nature of the training and methodology used to deliver the training, we focused on persons with physical disabilities. Persons with disabilities are one of the beneficiaries of the social cash transfer, a program of the republic of Zambia which aims at helping marginalised members of our communities. However, without the financial knowledge this group shall remain vulnerable and dependant on government and other social agencies for their survival. We must also mention that, disability is not inability to work.
Persons with disabilities often face various obstacles in accessing financial services. This condition is caused by the lack of financial literacy and the inaccessibility of financial service institutions, both in infrastructure and financial system rules. For this reason, this training aimed to explore the financial literacy of persons with disabilities and the accessibility of financial knowledge taking advantage of financial support that they receive from Government through the social welfare department.,.
Charity Centre for Child and Youth Development has strong establishments with communities in Northwestern Province. Financial literacy programmes have been one of the core businesses among other activities that CCCYD undertakes besides the financial empowerment progarm. For several years now CCCYD has conducted several trainings in different districts of North-western province of which Solwezi is one of the Districts. However, in the Month of June 2022 CCCYD trained 20 micro-entrepreneurs in financial literacy education. .
The objectives of the Micro Business Simulation (MBS) trainings are as follows:
CCCYD carried out the MBS training for some of its recipients of the Social Cash transfer and other micro business entrepreneurs to which some of them uses for business activities in order to lessen on government dependence. During the training participants were extremely expectant and some of their prospects were as follows:
Our organization realised that providing micro-loans to small scale entreprenuers without the financial education has contributed to a high number of defaulters hence affecting the micro-loan progarm. Therefore, this programs aims at empowering vulnerable entrepreneurs with financial education in the community as part of the Coronavirus relief Fund.
COVID-19 pandemic, like other calamities, has come at a colossal cost to human life. The COVID-19 pandemic is emblematic of this. Women are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 as compared to men because already many women depends on their small business to provide for their families. According to FinScope Zambia, 68% of women are financially excluded and women have less access to bank institutions at 11.6% compared to 17.5% for men. On the other hand, women have higher usage rate as concerns informal loan providers at 12.2% compared to 10.3% for men. (Interestingly, more women say they would spend potential credit on starting businesses than men.) As mentioned above, most women have low incomes earned outside the formal sector and less access to collateral or other security. Some banks have gender-biased policies insisting that the husband should give his consent to a wife’s application and/or collateral being proposed.
Quarantine measures imposed by Government as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic are putting many girls and women at heightened risk of violence in the home and cutting them off from essential protection services and social networks.
Economic stress on families due to the outbreak has put women and girls at greater risk of exploitation, child labour and gender-based violence is now the order of the day. Therefore, to respond to these challenges CCCYD has developed with project in consultation with many affected vulnerable women in Solwezi. The country lockdown is also lock down on women and girls’ autonomy, reinforcing the attitudes and practices that regard women and girls as second class and hold them back. Rigorous protection and safeguarding all girls and women from gender-based violence must be emphasised and prioritised in all policies, information, guidance at all stages of the response
The COVID-19 relief fund is providing a revolving fund to vulnerable women keeping orphans and vulnerable children to start a small home based business that would help them recover from major negative impacts of COVID-19. Vulnerable women are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Women in Solwezi feeds households and helps children attend school and meet health costs.
The project has so far supported over 200 vulnerable women who are recovering from the COVID-19 shocks. Micro entrepreneurship is key in attaining local development and improved income at household level. many people shall benefit and the majority beneficiaries will remain with a capital which they have lost during the Country's lock down. All the beneficiaries are also being trained in micro business management with the support from DSIK that is providing training resources and the micro business training game . When we empower a woman we have empowered the whole family hence developing this initiative to respond to COVID-19 economic impacts. Your continued is
Women in rural parts of Zambia face unique challenges when it comes to accessing financial services that leaves many very vulnerable and the many end results are that many women and girls fail to complete education which also forces young girls to get into early marriage and motherhood, and the demands of family and community support roles can leave women without the same opportunities as men, and without the tools and resources to economically empower themselves and their families. Other barriers to accessing financial services include systems of land inheritance which favour male ownership, leaving women without assets to pledge for bank loans and challenges for women who do not have powe. Cultural attitudes towards women in business can make it difficult for women to access the services and inputs which they need to progress.
Responding to some of the above highlighted challenges, Charity Centre for Children and Youth Development developed a Coronavirus Relief fund to support women with startup capital and so far the organization has supported over 150 women.
Our soft loans for women range from $30 to $200.
Besides, the provision of soft loans, we are also offering farmers and micro business simulation training to enhance financial literacy education for small scale farmers and micro-entreprenuers
We therefore, request all interested donors and institutions to come on board so that we can reach out to many vulnerable women in Zambia.
Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating.
We'll only email you new reports and updates about this project.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
Make a monthly donation & get 
