By Mugisha Leonard | Fundraising Officer
Organising women to challenge the existing norms and culture in efforts to promote their well being has not been an easy task and in this present era of globalisation and rapid developments, the problem of poverty still remains as an important area of concern in many parts of the world. In 2000, the United Nations declared the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and one of the goals is to halve the proportion of people below the poverty line by 2015.
Poverty is a human deprivation and blocks the access of the poor to mainstream institutions delivering services like education, health, nutrition, training, credit, market linkages and technology.
Most of the developing countries like Uganda have a dual financial system with an informal and a formal financial sector. The poor and lower-income people are usually left out from the formal financial system. The lack of access to the formal financial sector is a result of the lack of the collateral required due to risks involved in lending but also due to high costs involved in small-scale financial services and weak legal enforcement. The banks have always been reluctant to serve the poor, especially the asset-less, who cannot offer any collateral. Moreover, rural poor find the formal institutions alien and inaccessible.
To bridge this gap, karin is empowering women groups around the Karin health centers through micro loan projects that enable households to become self-reliant. Other projects include modern dairy farming, artisan training, Bio-sand filter safe water, value chain management, energy saving stoves, etc..Empowered households will be able to take care of their health, send their children to school and increase local incomes.
Since 90% of Northern Uganda's population are agriculturalists, most of these farmers are being skilled to put away their rudimentary tools and practices to embrace modern methods of farming which yield higher returns, market access and are friendly to the environment.
Karin as an organisation, is very pleased with this tremendous progress, when the community is organised, it is easier to channel support to them. Some members have been trained in making energy-saving stoves. These stoves are made from local materials including clay. We hope that members can make these stoves and sell them and in addition incorporate these in their homes. We are very grateful for partners like you for changing the lives of our community members. We encourage you to keep supporting our projects as we strive to make this world a better place.
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