Shone Yehiwot Income-Generating Activities

Country: Ethiopia

City/Town: Shone

CarePoint: Shone Yehiwot

People Impacted: 60

Total Cost: $15,625

Estimated time to complete: 1 year

Area of Transformation

Economic Development

Project Description

In the Shone Yehiwot CarePoint community, people live in impoverished conditions. It is important to work in an integrated way of empowering children and supporting families to earn their own income through participating in income-generating activities (IGAs). This project will be supporting them with initial capital in the form of revolving funds, as well as providing training and forming a savings group under the Carepoint.

Historical Background

Shone town is around 332 km from Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa. Shone Yehiwot is one of the CarePoints working with HopeChest, where most of the guardians of CarePoint children are the most impoverished in the community. The average count of household members is estimated to be six people and the food support given by the CarePoint is shared among family members. We are working hard to make our programming more self-sustaining. For this purpose, four savings IGA groups with 60 beneficiaries will be organized at the CarePoint. These small groups will save their own matching money, so that participants will take ownership of the group’s success and the group members will support one another.

Return on Investment Potential

With this project, the beneficiaries continuously manage their businesses and start saving. The group will serve as a microfinance institution or savings and credit cooperative that will be managed by the members and independently working on the support of the community.

Additional Impacts

Strengthening the group’s finances and transitioning to a savings and credit cooperative in the community creates a link with other financial institutions that can be involved in the development of the community.

Volunteer and Travel Opportunities

Volunteers are encouraged to travel and witness the progress and impact of the project in the community. This also has an opportunity to share experiences among the two communities in terms of culture, know what business, etc. Trainings can be facilitated on different topics to support diverse parts of the community.

Engagement Opportunities

The processes of forming individual businesses and continually supporting them demands training at different levels to upgrade the skills and knowledge of individuals. Therefore, volunteers are highly welcome to share their experiences in this aspect.