women improve their livelihoods through self help groups

Self-help groups are generally facilitated by NIRP in Masaka, and increasingly advise and train members in a variety of on- and off-farm income-generating activities. Indeed, in a number of recent projects, NIRP were substituted by trained facilitators and animators drawn from self-help groups.

Through promoting self-help group, NIRP projects have contributed to improving the overall status of women in terms of income, empowerment, welfare, etc.

In the Rural Women’s self help groups, for example, 90 per cent of the beneficiaries reported increased access to and control over resources such as land, dwellings and livestock. Under the Livelihoods Improvement Project in Buwunga sub county, women self-help group members in Mazinga were even elected as chairpersons at different levels (heads of the local governments at the village or small town level).

In those operations, the country programme evaluation also found unequivocal advances in the self-confidence and assertiveness of self-help group members.

In Work together Women’s Development Project, 50 per cent of women self-help group members reported that, for the first time in their lives, they had visited new places and traveled longer distances, while 90 per cent had interacted with institutions such as banks, NGOs and project agencies.

Fig. women doing an agricultural activity together

The impact study on Buwunga and Gayaza women self help Project reveals that access to finance through group savings and lending to members had allowed women to become increasingly involved in economic activities such as the collection and sale on local markets of non-timber forest products, engaged in productive agriculture and small trade businesses.
Fig. Women work together

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