Micro Enterprises

Parents take 100% responsibility

The goal of Self-Led Self Capitalized Saving and Loans and Micro-Enterprises is to provide the basic knowledge and opportunities for the parents and guardians to get their own children off the street and into school in a sustainable way. This includes being 100% responsible for their child’s education. In the program, we build an understanding of the rights of children to education. Our goal is to successfully exit beneficiaries after 5 years of being on our support. Their empowered parents and guardians take on from there.

How it works

Parents and guardians learn how to run their own business and get to participate in business opportunities. SCEF is em­power­ing them to take up their natural roles of providing for their children’s education in the long term, by teaching them practices like:

• savings
• time management
• leadership
• teamwork
• borrowing and repayment

The saving and loans model

Together with Gateway 4 Youth Foundation, SCEF introduced a well-researched village saving and loans model to the parents and guardians of their beneficiaries. Our first group started with 30 parents and guardians, and the next year a second group was started. The leadership of the groups is elected by its members and the entire capital of their loans fund and social insurance fund is raised from the contributions of the membership. These contributions are collected during their weekly meetings and range from $1-$5 per person.

Trainings and support for micro enterprises

We realized at some point that most of the members of families we support earn below a $1 each day, and about 50% could not raise amounts to participate in the program. We then instituted micro enterprises trainings and support for the parents and guardians of our program. Some parents participate in jewelry training and the production for sales. We have grouped the parents into various micro enterprises and we are seeking funding to commence training.