|
Rotating Village Loan Scheme (ROVILOS)
Rotating Loan grants to Village Women ( for petty-traders, small agricultural farming venture - rice, cassava & palm oil farming ) in Enugu State of Nigeria
Background of the project
About 80% of Nigerian's population of about 120 million people live in the villages. Most of these villages neither have running water or electricity. Some villagers are better off. But the villages in Nkanu local government areas of Enugu State, Nigeria are dying in poverty. Even the subsistence agriculture there is no longer functioning. Because of the desperate situation in the villages which forces the youths to migrate into the urban cities, the situation in the villages are getting worse. Many of the youths from the areas see the migration into Europe as asylum-seeker as their only way out. The cheapest and the best method of helping the African asylum-seekers in Europe in the long run is to help develop some minimal infrastructures in the villages home village. Under the present situation in many of the villages, the people left to suffer the consequence are the village women who have no other alternative than to vegetate in the villages. Many of these women are really strong and industrious.
They go any length to earn money to get at least their male children get the basic education in order to escape the calamity of the village life. The female children who are unlucky to get educated join the vicious circle of poverty in the village. Unfortunately the villages, in spite of the population (Ugbawka for example has a population of about 40.000 persons) are too remote to attract the attention of the government. The villages have no form of modern administrative governments at all. Representatives of the villages come together to solve the problems as they come. That was one of the reasons why we decided to help the people with the project group, Development Projects Coordination.
Objectives
The most important objective of the Rotating Village Loan Scheme
-
To help the village women get the capital they need for their economic venture
-
To help make living in the villages attractive through the widening of the areas of economic ventures thereby promoting the potentials of individual and community development.
-
Many of the women are very enterprising. The loans are extra incentive for these women who want to trade but lack the capital for their petty trade; or those of them who lack the fund for their farming.
- The payment of school fees, the meeting up of medical bills and the clothing for the children are all expenditures that lie on the mothers in the villages.
-
In spite of the private expenditure that village mothers must pay for, they have to contribute levies for solving other village-financing problem - burial of relations, repair of village schools etc. Giving the women some loan that will yield them some profit is a very excellent method of making them solve their problems. With the profit realised out of the scheme, village infrastructures - schools, market stalls, bamboo bridges - will be built or repaired.
- At the same time village infrastructures, such as the water bore-holes, the community markets, the
important connecting bridges in the villages should be administered with the aid of such profits.( The
present method is to start contributing levies each time a village infrastructure gets damaged)
- This scheme will empower the poor in the villages to be in the economic positions to solve their problems themselves.
- Women are most vulnerable to poverty. They carry the burden in the families. When we want to prevent illiteracy, or the spread of AIDS and diseases, or overpopulation, or infant mortality, then we have to help the women in the villages with this loan scheme.
- Strengthening the women economically is a way to enhance the chance of respecting their rights as women in the villages. The more depended the woman are on the men is, the less are the chance of the men respecting their human right. Anybody wanting the respect of the right of women must give the women the instrument to make themselves economically viable.
1.)The Loan scheme has the objective of saving the younger girl from suffering what their mothers are suffering today. If the mothers are too poor, only the male children will have their school fees paid. In that case the female children will grow up as illiterates and fall back into this vicious circle of poverty.
2.)The economic viability in the villages enhance the social and administrative development of the villages.
3.)The infrastructures and economic ventures in the villages can be so developed and this will attract the youths to stay back in the villages instead of migrating into the towns or to Europe.
4.)The scheme will help strengthen the administrative structures of the women's organisation in the villages, which in turn will strengthen the co-operation in the community. This scheme enhances the independence of the women as human being, as individuals and as persons who have right.
Results at the end of the project or during implementation
The above-mentioned objectives will be expected as result of this scheme.
This scheme was already tried in two villages as a pilot project.
From the experience gathered from the pilot project for the scheme, the women of Isigwe were able to finance the construction of the benches for the village school out of the profit made from the loan.
-
The women learnt from the scheme to pay back their loans when due. They knew that paying back the loan was the own chance they have to get new loans.
-
They were force by the new situation to learn to keep record of their account. That widened their educational horizon.
- The scheme encourage social and economic development in the villages, whereby the men were forced by the new situation to co-operate with the women in discussion to help the village school.
- The scheme in Isigwe gave the women a sense of economic self-sustenance and encouraged them as individuals to be more enterprising.
- The scheme is an instrument of women's education on their rights as women in the society, and on their duties towards the village in the development of a civil democratic society based on co-operation.
- The scheme was seen to have helped strengthen the capacity of the village to develop itself economically and finance the cost of needed village infrastructures - the building of desks for the school, etc.
The second project in planning is:
Ensuring physiotherapy/orthopaedic and logaoedic treatment for the Handicapped in the VOCATIONAL CENTRE FOR HANDICAPPED AND YOUTHS, Enugu, Nigeria
Many of the intakes into St. Joseph's Institute Enugu come with different forms of disabilities. Some are deaf and dumb. Others sit in the wheel chairs. Some have such deformities that they groan in pains.
Apart from giving the youths and the handicapped education in St. Joseph's institute, also interested in the health of these people. St. Joseph's Institute is forced by the situation to assist such handicapped persons whose deformity need orthopaedic assistance to reduce the painfulness. Unfortunately, most of such handicapped youths come from very poor families. The and their families are not in the position to pay the cost of a therapy.
St. Joseph's Institute is also not in the position to foot the bill of the treatments needed by all the handicapped in the institute. The institute is not also financially in the position to employ the services of the therapists - physiotherapist and a sign-language teacher/logopaedist - at the rate needed.
Until now the institute could only afford to let a sign language teacher come in for four hours twice weekly to help the deaf and dumb inmates of the Institute.
Long-term aim
It is not enough to send the physical handicapped to under orthopaedic treatment. Such handicapped person operated upon needs steady physiological treatment too.
Our aim is to create a therapy centre in St. Joseph's institute.
That means the handicapped persons in St. Joseph and the others who come in later years will get a direct physiotherapeutic treatment and assistance in sign language from persons within the institute.
The major problem is the insurance of the continuous payment of the salaries of these specialists (physiotherapist and the sign language teacher) for this venture.
Method of ensuring the salaries of the Physiotherapist and Sign language teacher
Until now St. Joseph's affords the salaries of it's staff without outside subvention by hiring out the at weekends the classrooms for seminars, lecture and most often marriage festivities.
The same method will be applied with the therapy centre. The therapy hall will be hired out at weekends for lectures and festivities.
The thereby generated fund will be used in paying the salaries of the treatment for the handicapped.
Through this method, the physiotherapeutic and the logopaedic treatments of the handicapped will be ensure on a long-term basis. Through this method, St. Josep's Institute gets thereby the assistance it needs to ensure that the handicapped persons who need treatment get them.
|
|
