Fair Trade – Empower Women Through Income-Generation
Make a difference, change a life with your paper bead purchase. All profits from beads sales go to our Ugandan women beaders and to projects and programs in the communities where our beader groups are located which we believe will have the most impact on helping the communities and beader group members overcome poverty. Most of our support labor is volunteer. This is not a handout. It is a hand up which allows our beaders to build their own sustainable businesses that they can do in Uganda to support themselves and their families.
The Home Ownership Project
Uganda Home Ownership Program Helps African Women Own Homes
Outreach Uganda’s Women’s Home Ownership program offers qualifying women in their Vulnerable care women’s group the opportunity to become homeowners. Many of these women who are widows, live in room rented houses with there children . Some women are very elderly and others are HIV positive.
Uganda Home Ownership Program Helps African Women Own Homes
Purpose of the Women’s Home Ownership Program
Ornament Sales Help Women Own Homes
“Helping these enterprising women become homeowners is the final step in helping them overcome poverty” stated Carol Davis, Outreach Uganda’s president. The Jinja women have been saving money from bead and craft sales and small business profits since 2012. Pictured here are some of the Ugandan women we work with doing their beading so they can earn money for home down payments under the Uganda women’s home ownership program.
Vulnerable care Uganda women beading to earn money for home down payments.The women have been making beaded snowflake ornaments so that profits from those ornament sales can help provide matching funds for the homes. Buy a snowflake ornament. All profits from ornament sales go towards the women’s home ownership program. Some women now have enough money for down payments on new homes. This is amazing considering most were living on less than $1 per day when we first met them!
Uganda Women’s Home Ownership Program Details
As part of the Uganda Women’s Home Ownership program, we hope to build homes that look like these two bedroom homes.
We will construct the homes using compressed earth bricks, and iron sheet roofs. Each home will have interior plumbing, an indoor kitchen and space outside for a small garden. We will build the homes in phases of 10 to 12 homes per phase as funds are available.
How Can You Help Women Become Homeowners?
- Volunteer to be on our home ownership team to help provide guidance for this project. We need many varied skills such as construction, business, legal, fund raising, solar and more.
- Donations of any amount are always welcome!
- Volunteer to be a Home Captain.
Home captains can be an individual, group or business who will commit to raising $6,000 of one home’s total estimated cost of $12,000. And so, we need 10 Home Captains for each project phase of the Uganda women’s home ownership program.
Working with Women, Children and Their Communities
When Outreach Uganda first begins work with community groups, we require that the interested women (or men) form themselves into a CBO (community-based organization) grou. This is the Ugandan equivalent of a localized nonprofit organization. This allows the group to develop its leadership and to become responsible for the group’s activities and development.
Outreach Uganda provides marketing for each beader group’s craft products so that the group begins to have a regular source of income both for the individual beaders within the group and for the group itself. We place bead orders every two to six weeks depending on the season of the year. The group’s paper beaded jewelry items are their most popular craft products. In addition, they make many beautiful cloth items out of African batik and kitenge material. Please support our women by shopping in our online store. Or you could host a bead party for your friends! The more beads we sell, the more groups and the more ladies we can help!
Focus on Sustainability and Income-Generation
Outreach Uganda’s mission is to help empower our women’s groups and their communities to improve all aspects of their lives so that they can overcome poverty. Sustainable income-generation projects are a key focus of these efforts.
We encourage women who make fair trade crafts to save money from their craft sales. They can use these monies to provide funds for emergencies. Equally important, they can use their savings to start individual businesses that they can do all year long. Micro-credit loans from their group’s internal revolving loan fund provide additional help. These loans can help a group member to start or expand her business.
Empowerment Work with Community Groups in Rural Northern Uganda
In rural northern Uganda, income-generation activities focus on the raising of cash crops both individually, and with groups of women. We also work with groups of men. In the village where our third women’s group is located, we work with the entire community.
In addition, we partner with the community on expanding its parent supported primary and nursery school, and on helping its local health center. This clinic serves the entire parish of five villages, almost 6000 people. Even the men are becoming involved through forming their own men’s CBO group. The group targets cash crop and organic farming. Soon, it hopes to begin beekeeping.
