By John Kavyavu | Chief Operating Officer
“Bwakisa Carte” is a micro savings program where collectors collect daily deposits from client savers during a 31 days cycle. The collectors return the accumulated savings to the savers minus one day’s deposit as a collection fee. Clients have the option to collect all the money after each cycle or leave their savings to grow. PMI DR Congo has been promoting this program for over two years and we are thrilled with the results. Increasingly, we are able to bring success stories, like Juliette, to share with our readers.
Maman Juliette Maman Juliette is a single mother of 4 children. She lives in Kinshasa, the famously hectic capital city of the DR Congo. Paying for her four children to go to school once seemed unimaginable. But since she joined the “Bwakisa Carte” program, she started to save 50 cents every day with a Pro-Microfinance staff member, who visits her, along with dozens of other entrepreneurs, every day of the week. Maman Juliette began to save 15 USD every month. Today, almost a year since she joined the program, she also increased her daily savings deposits to $USD 1.3. Her monthly savings have more than doubled as a result. Previously, she was forced to take a loan to pay for her children’s school fees. Each year, she barely managed to buy their school supplies at the beginning of the school calendar, but today, with her daily savings, she is able to pay school fees on time. In addition, she says, she’s also able to respond to minor emergencies in her family without being forced into debt.
Juliette’s story shows that saving money, even if only pennies at a time, is a life changing habit. Pro-microfinance is encouraging the saving culture in the communities we work with. As of today, we have over 2,000 micro entrepreneurs in both Kinshasa and Butembo participating in the microsaving program.
With your support, we plan to recruit and train 10 to 15 new Bwakisa Carte collectors early next year to be able to reach out to more micro entrepreneurs.
Thank you for making this happen,
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