Rural Entrepreneurs Livelihoods Support Project

Dear friends,

We are finally off the ground with our project. I am happy to report that our project successfully secured £50K grant from DFID's Small Charities Challenge Fund early this year. We have completed due diligence process, and we have received the first-quarter award of £14K towards the running of the project. As a result of consultation with the fund managers, the number of beneficiaries was reduced to 50 and the remaining 50 to be considered in the next project.

So far, we have recruited the project Manager, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer and other support staff. The Executive Director and the project Manager attended an eight days immersion course in Kampala in September. The course covered business skills training designed for ultra-poor beneficiaries and will be used to train the project beneficiaries.

This month, we carried out the next two stages of the beneficiary selection process, which involved scrutinising of the shortlisted beneficiaries ( shortlisting done by women elders and mosque leaders ) and meeting shortlisted beneficiaries. During the meeting with the beneficiaries, we carried out participatory wealth ranking and group verification of an individual's family circumstances and needs. Through this process, the beneficiaries were able to identify 50 most needy women from amongst 200 shortlisted. The process was amazing and empowering for the women since they were able to identify destitute women from amongst themselves without outside influence. During the last week of October, we shall visit each of the women to collect baseline data and confirm their family circumstances and their ability to engage in economic activities. We aim to complete the validation process by the end of October unless the current heavy rains in the region make it difficult.

God willing we plan to start two months basic business skills training in November. The women will receive their grant in the form of asset transfer early next year subject to the successful completion of the course. We are in the process of completing the market survey to provided them with livelihood options to choose from. We are very excited about this project, and we hope to use it to leverage more support from donors, individuals and institutions to reach more women in the region. We thank you for the support you have provided to us so far, and we hope you will continue walking with us as we expand to reach more ultra-poor and vulnerable population in the region.

Thank you.