Savings & Enterprise

Interchristian Fellowships' Evangelical Mission (IcFEM)

 

Savings & Enterprise

 
For many years, IcFEM and has run a microenterprise scheme to encourage and train those running small businesses to be successful. Small loans have been made available which increase in size at each loan around following successful repayment of the previous loan. Many small businesses have flourished and some are now on their fifth round of loan.
 

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In the rural community there is a great need for savings, credit and banking facilities. There are some commercial banks in the towns but these are relatively inaccessible to the rural population in terms of time and travelling costs. The Fellowship Savings and Credit Scheme (FeSaCS) have been put in place to bridge the gap and allow people in the villages to start to save small amounts. People may not have actual money to save but they may have grain or livestock. The scheme is administered by their fellow members in the community and loans may be available not just as money but as seed or chicks. The vision for the saving schemes is that they will eventually grow into a commercial bank, which reaches into every village.

  • Meet the Team ↓

     

     

    Rosmary Lukulu

    Coordinator for FESACs

     

  • Fellowship FeSaCS (Fellowships Savings & Credit Scheme) ↓

    The Fellowship Savings and Credit Scheme aims at bringing communities into fellowship with one another while encouraging them to save their meagre earnings bit by bit to build their local capital that they can later borrow to invest in activities that can generate more income at household level and improve their lives in line with IcFEM Mission and Vision.

    Vision:

    Economic and Social empowerment for the community.

    Mission:

    Promote the Savings and Investment culture.

    Goal:

    Increased Household incomes.

    Objectives:

    Encourage communities to be actively involved in savings to form local capital for investment in projects to drive the local economy.

    Activities

    • Sensitise and envision the community on the Scheme.

    • Establish structures for the Scheme in all Local Transformation Units.

    • Develop guidelines to manage the Scheme.

    • Develop training materials.

    • Train committees on operations and management of the scheme.

    • Put the scheme into Operation i.e. registration of members, collection of savings, training of Fellowship members, etc.

  • Micro enterprise (COREL) COREL Community Revolving Loan Scheme ↓

    Aim – to help eradicate poverty by enabling people to establish sustainable income-generating micro-businesses.

    The programme is intended to alleviate poverty in the community by assisting small businesses, by giving some credit and training. IcFEM Mission started the scheme as a result of seeing the felt need in the community, namely the inability of poor but high potential small business people to access credit due to high collateral demanded by the main financing institutions.

    Objectives:

    • Teach the importance of hard work for the purposes of earning a living.
    • Provide training in basic business skills and management.
    • Teach positive attitudes to using and saving money.
    • Provision of credit to people who are not able to access the formal banking system.
    • Increase the provision of goods and services for the benefit of the local community.
    • Promotion of farming as a means of food diversification and enhanced nutrition.
    • Emphasizing the importance of hard work for the purpose of earning a living and contributing to national development.
    • To increase economic growth and employment opportunities through development of viable small scale enterprises
    • To alleviate poverty and enhance the standard of living of the community

    Beneficiaries

    • Villagers in rural areas [priority given to those in the remotest places].
    • Women over 18 years old [2/3] and men over 18 years old [1/3] with an existing business activity that can be expanded or a viable business idea.

    Implementation

    The Community Revolving Loan [COREL] scheme enables very poor people to borrow money to provide working capital in order to establish income generating micro businesses. Being unable to borrow is the biggest handicap to the business community and prevents people from venturing into business.

    The scheme is designed to encourage the creation of viable small-scale enterprises to create and increase employment opportunities and economic growth through utilising local business skills e.g. carpentry, dress making, shoe making and repair, bakery etc. Local technologies e.g. wood carving, organic farming, building construction, etc are also encouraged.

    People in the selected locality are mobilised to form groups of 20. Everybody meets together once a month. The identified people are helped to identify their needs which the IcFEM technical team studies to establish that they are the right and viable business opportunities. The group members undergo training before funding commences. The members buy into ownership of the programme by acquiring monetary shares which in turn act as savings and initial capital for the fund. The groups are split into sub-groups of 5 members which also meet once a fortnight. The members guarantee the loan repayments of other members in the sub-group. The minimum amount needed per member to establish a small business is around 5,000Kshilling (£40). Loans are repaid over 12 months with an interest rate of 1% per month [well below bank interest costs].

    So far, COREL has enabled over 90 people to be trained and to establish successful small businesses.

    For more information on the results of the scheme please see these reports:

    Report 1

    Report 2

    Report 3

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