African Woman Food Farmer initiative (AWFFI)
African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) microfinance program, is a training, savings and credit program that is designed to economically empower rural Ugandan women food farmers. On a smaller scale, a microfiance program that provides the same facilities for men is also implemented. These microfinance programs are components of the Epicentre strategy, an integrated rural development approach
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Plot 8, Kyagwe road
Project City
Kampala
Project Province/State
Uganda
Project Postal/Zip Code
P.O box, 2
Project Country
Uganda
Your idea
Country your work focuses on:
Uganda
Website URL
YouTube Upload
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
<$10
Name Your Project
African Woman Food Farmer initiative (AWFFI)
Describe Your Idea
African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) microfinance program, is a training, savings and credit program that is designed to economically empower rural Ugandan women food farmers. On a smaller scale, a microfiance program that provides the same facilities for men is also implemented. These microfinance programs are components of the Epicentre strategy, an integrated rural development approach
Innovation
Describe your idea in fewer than 50 words.
African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) microfinance program, is a training, savings and credit program that is designed to economically empower rural Ugandan women food farmers. On a smaller scale, a microfiance program that provides the same facilities for men is also implemented. These microfinance programs are components of the Epicentre strategy, an integrated rural development approach
What makes your idea unique?
At the heart of its uniqueness is its intelectual property. The Vision, Commitment and action (VCA) approach differenciates this initiative from others that believe in investiment of cash or goods and services first and change as the consequence. It is also different from those who simply provide training and assume new skills will create momentum for change. AWWFI, is designed to make a rural Ugandan woman an economic player, a decision maker and an enterprenure by enabiling her to get access to financial services, marketing and training so that she can invest in her small businesses and enterprises to make profits and creat wealth in her community. The ultimate objective of the microfinance programs in every epicentre is to establish in a five year period a government recognised, member owned and women led rural bank to provide the entire epicentre community with sustainable access to savings and credit facilities. The initiave leads to reduced dependency. Most importantly, true empowerment of women by enabling them own and manage rural banks for financial sustainability is achieved. This teaches men that women can be valueable contributors to household and the community; motivates women and reduces their dependency on men and increases their ability to manage if their husband dies or leaves them. It is a uniquely low cost sustainable model since it is implemented within an integrated strategy for the end of hunger and poverty thereby achive the millenium development goals
What is your area of work? (Please check as many as apply.)
Early childhood development , Education , Adult education , Food security , Income generation , Microfinance , Rural development , Environment & Sustainability , Food , Health care , HIV/AIDS , Infant mortality , Reproductive and maternal health , Sanitation , Women's Issues .
What impact have you had?
Five governement recognised women owned and managed rural banks with total capital of over Ush. 1,385,725,224 have been formed with 165,000 beneficiaries.Over Ush. 278,831,792 have been mobilised in savings.By providing the women food farmers with adequate training, by instilling in them the importance of saving and by providing them with small loans and providing them with VCA workshops, the AWFFI program has enabled these women to change their mindsets and to engage in income generating activities (IGAs) and to increase their incomes.AWFFI partners use this added income to reinvest in their businesses, grow more food, pay their children's school fees, construct pit latrines, purchase medicine and pay for health clinic fees for themselves and their family members and make home improvements or build a new home.
The epicentre community has managed continued growth on several key dimentions with clear lines of sight to the stabilisation of food supplies; income generation and community expansion. Members of the community have increased their incomes by an estimated 30-50%. Food storage on individual and communal basis is emphasised, leading to improved number and quality of meals eaten on a daily basis.
Describe the primary problem(s) that your project is addressing.
The absence of financial services in rural areas poses one of the most serious constraights to rural development and to economic growth in general. The rural sector is not only neglected by the mainstream banks but also by microfinance initiatives that have had a tendency to concentrate in urban areas.The few that are found in rural areas make the rural poor especially women poorer than they found them because they do not provide adequate training and support for participants. AWFFI was thus designed to fill this gap and give opportunity to rural communities; first to mobilise savings and then to access credit with the long term goal of creating government recognised, women led and community owned rural banks. It is hoped that this bottom up approach to financial services that include extensive training, empowerment and support, would have a self re-enforcing effect on rural partners.
Describe the steps that your organization is taking to make your project successful.
THP strengthening the microfinance program by increasing the outreach of the microfinance services in the epicentre communities and ensuring Better Business Development training (BBD) for our rural partners.Additional resources, diversification of services and additional training is to act as a spring board for a more integrated and holistic approach and will strengthen producer groups, mitigate market risks and improve business development through the entire value chain, leading to a general transformation of THP partners.This will have a broader effect of contributing to higher level objectives especially the 8 millenium development goals (MDGS).
Impact
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Success in Year 1:
The first year will be dedicated to empowering the rural banks further to develop new products and services in order to serve their members in a more efficient and productive manner. This will involve reviewing the current product range through a market survey and needs assessment. This will establish independent opinions on the rural banks and the products being offered and the whole THP's microfiance programs so that they can be refined to better serve the emerging needs of the members.
Success in Year 2:
The second year will be dedicated to increasing the impact and catchments of the microfinance programs through institutional strenthening. We shall conduct active promotion of the benefits of savings, strengthen the coordination of the village Loan committees, establish and train appropriate structures,increase training as well as instituting incentives for leaders to ensure expansion, growth and increased impact.
Success in Year 3:
Year three will be dedicated to business development. Food security and agribusiness are also THP's major interventions which are targeted towards improving household incomes, adding value through food processing, making additional business opportunities, strengthning market linkages and job creation. THP will therefore promote agribusiness strategies in order to tap the comparative advantage of small holder farmers in the epicentres. Epicentre buildings will be essential centres for collection and marketing.
Do you have a business plan or strategic plan? (yes/no)
yes, we have a three year strategic plan with a log frame aproach for better implementation.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 1:
One of the most important actions to grow the initiative is to continue encouraging partners to mobilise savings through effective use of the village loan committees for cost effectiveness. Therefore, promotional campaigns will be instituted through various methods that will include but not limited to: personal /direct recruitment by both staff and committees of the rural banks; Institutional adversitising; Savings account promotion; Publicity for image building; sponsoring events; targeting men, youth and children, linking up with the informal sector such as faith based organisations, etc.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 2:
We also need to develop training materials towards market oriented agriculture and entreprenureship. In addition, specialised producer groups in various activities will be encouraged and strengthened for specialisation. A Training needs to be organised for such groups and their leaders so that they can in turn train others for success.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 3:
We need to set up a rural market infrastructure to facilitate wholesale trade through organising functional collection points at the village level for the produce and therefore to the epicentres for marketing. marketing groups therefore need to be formed as well as opening up marketing channels to facilitate the interface buyers and sellers. Therefore, linkages with market/businesses is key in growing the initiative. Thus, value addition and specialisation per epicentre needs to be encouraged and promoted.
Describe the expected results of these actions.
We expect an expanded outreach of the microfiance program in THP epicentres in addition to increased number of savers and borrowers in the rural banks. We also hope to see a refined lending methodology as well as ensuring an increase an improvement in rural partners' businesses and enterprises. We expect more refined and increased rural bank products that respond to the needs of the rural communities more adequately and a sustained self financing rural sector.
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Over 80% of food eaten in Africa and Uganda in particular is grown by rural women. Yet, they do all this with very limited ownership of land and a lot of druggery and they are the least supported group. Women bare primary responsibility for almost all key aspects of family life to raise children, look for food, feed the family, look for firewood, look for water, nurse the sick, look after their husbands, etc. During the baseline survey conducted by THP in 2001 in rural villages in Uganda, it was discovered that they do this with very little support in form of credit because they lack the collateral. These facts and the desire to make a difference in the lives of these rural women and change their mindset from a resigned state to instilling the belief that they can help themselves through collective action, moved me to implement and support this initiative from its infacy stage in 2001 todate where we are seeing a vibrant rural comunity with women having a voice in decision making, they are respected leaders, role models and key change agents for their families and the communities in which they live.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Dr. Tadesse Fitigu, Hunger Project Vice President for Africa programs served for over 20 years with THP and he is behind the innovation of the AWFFI program and the Epicentre strategy. He is originaly from Ethiopia, a country, like many African countries that has seen food shortages in a long time. Tired of this scenario, he decided that developing an initiative that empowers Africa's most important producers of food was the sure way to go in ending hunger sustgainably in rural areas. The initiave started operating in Senegal in 1998 but its growth and refinment during implementation has learnt a lot of lessons from Uganda since 2001. Dr. Tadesse also served his country in several roles as ambassodor to various countries and the UN in addition to other roles in other capacities.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through one Ashoka Fellow, Mwalimu Musheshe when he warn an award and later through the internent when i submitted an article on ending Abuse. Since then, I have been interested in the Changemakers page.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Under this initiative, sustainablity is established from the start by placing the leadership of the strategy in the hands of the local people with women at the centre. It starts by helping people to create a vision of a different future through vision, Commitment and action workshops (VCA), mobilise commitment to action through targible projects and skill building, establishment of formal roles for local leaders as well as put the women at the centre with female owned and managed rural banks. Emphasis on loans to women and 50% representation of women on all other leadership committees is key for sustainability.
What would prevent the strategy from being a success is the environment in which we operate that is used to handouts and top-down service delivery paradigm as opposed to the bottom-up empowerment model that this initiative calls for. There is therefore need to change the mindset of service providers including governments to believe in this intentionally patient empowerement approach- that ensures that the community guenuinely changes mindsets ahaed of significant infrastructure investiment.
Financing source
If yes, provide organization name.
Yes- it is implemeted as part of The Hunger Project's (THP) Epicentre strategy- an intergrated, bottom up and gender focused rural development model.
How long has this organization been operating? (i.e. less than a year; 1-5 years; more than 5 years)
More than five year. THP started operating in Uganda in 1999 with an aintergrated appraoch for rural development. The African Woman Food Farmer initiative Microfinance program started in 2001 as an integrated program of the epicentre strategy.
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
THP-Uganda has a National advisory council (NAC).
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs? (yes/no)
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses? (yes/no)
No.
The Story
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government? (yes/no)
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
One of the key pillars for The Hunger project is working with Local governments. They help to mobilise the people to participate in our programs as well as offer technical assistance in form of extention staff and medical services at the epicentres. Bi laws for establishing communinal gardens are also done by government in addition to lifting taxes from THP's imported goods like vehicles. This lowers costs of operation in addition to ensuring sustainability.
Working with other organisations is ciritical in ensuring proper partnerships, coordination and networking for information sharing, resource mobilisation and support for the benefit of our rural partners. This also helps to avoid duplication of services and confusing the rural poor with uncoordianted service providers.
Working with business ensures support of all kinds and it can be a a source of proper branding and marketing.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000.
What is the total number of employees and total number of volunteers at your organization?
10 professional, 10 support staff and 4 Volunteers
What is your organization's business classification?
Non-profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Have you received funding from any of the following groups? (Please check as many as apply.)
 | 144 weeks agoIrene Wasike Muwanguzi updated this Competition Entry. |
| 144 weeks agoIrene Wasike Muwanguzi said: I am thrilled by the mesage I have recieved regarding my entry to the change makers competition: Cultivating Innovations: ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 145 weeks agoFran Holuba said: On July 10, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Cultivating Innovations: Solutions for Rural ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
