Provide financial life-line in Togo and Kenya

Action10 visited our programme partner and our programmes in the nine villages in rural Togo during May 2019. We usually visit once a year. We were as always well received, both by our Programme management partner S.E.VIE and our Target partners in the villages.

During the visit we discussed lessons learned and programme strengthening. For the villages we agreed to try money transfer with mobile money, ensure coaching meetings when challenges occur, rather than every week as we have done before, and to involve more coaches from the villages than before. We agreed on ways to strengthen the cooperatives and the efficiency. We have previously agreed to strengthen the team with a coach who visits every month and an auditor for the annual financial review.

We have evidence based impact that 100 women entrepreneurs are now self-sustained. They run their own businesses without our coaching. 200 women entrepreneurs run successful businesses benefiting from our coaching and 100 are on the waiting list to enter. We are also happy to notice that 150 children have concluded their primary education, which is a side-effect of our programme. These children had not entered school when our partner identified them as vulnerable and needing our assistance.

The programme is successful and we have seen a need to scale-up. It has been decided to copy the village programme to a semi-urban city. We will manage 200 entrepreneurs in the semi-urban city Tsévié, and we expect that 30-50 of them will become self-sustained per year. At the same time we will continue the programme in the villages.

We truly admire our Programme management partner S.E.VIE for their capability in the villages, how they are appreciated by the people and how they have a warm heart for everyone, especially the children. We would also like to take this opportunity to proudly thank for the attention and support by Rotary Club of Stockholm International for their attention and support.

On behalf of the 500 women benefiting from our programme and their families, we want to sincerely thank the Global Giving Friends for your attention and for your support. You shall rest assured that your contributions are well invested. Less than 3 % remains in Sweden, 7% remains with the Programme management partner in Togo and 90 % reaches the vulnerable in Togo. Further, we work with a sustainable aspect in mind and our programmes are copied and scaled up. The money invested is recollected and re-used, over and over again.