Child of Hope

Providing hope and a future for the children of Africa

Registered Charity Number: 1136068
Broadstone, Dorset

The impact of helping mums start a business

Date Posted: 04 Nov 2016

We now have 162 of our parents benefiting from our highly successful Income Generating Activity (IGA) programme. These are the parents of 203 of our children.

Their businesses are small and varied... here are some examples: operating small shops; selling charcoal and paraffin; selling rice and chenga; operating vegetable stalls; sorting and selling groundnuts; selling new and second-hand clothes; selling fish; selling beans; selling cassava flour; selling water; tailoring; operating restaurants; selling cooked maize; selling matooke; sorting and selling coffee; making jewellery; operating hair salons; transport business; making bricks; selling chips; cultivating; keeping animals; selling porridge; carpentry.

Some statistics for you! They show us how our children are gradually moving away from abject poverty, thanks to the businesses of their parents: -

•   95% now live somewhere better than a hut.  (2015: 89%)

•   100% eat at least two meals a day.  (2015: 100%)

•   52% have at least two pairs of shoes.  (2015: 48%)

•   75% sleep on a mattress rather than on the ground.  (2015: 46%)

•   100% have access to clean water and a working pit latrine.  (2015: 100%)

•   69% of the parents are now able to afford to pay school fees for another child to go to a state school.  (2015: 61%)

You can see two videos filmed in the Namatala slum of some of the mums who have benefited from the scheme, and how that has influenced the lives of their children.

To read more about our IGA scheme, please click here.