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Village Community Banks -VICOBAs

Empowering women through income generating projects and networking
 

WEECE supports rural women to start their own businesses, giving them the opportunity to contribute to the household income, to support their families and to increase their self-esteem. The Village Community Bank program VICOBA has been established with the aim to give women a perspective and the funds to start a business and to run community-owned projects.

At WEECE, a village Community Bank is a group of women who come together to mutually support each other by pooling assets creating economic stability to all members of the VICOBA. This group is usually about 30 women who live in the same area.

Every month each member of the community will deposit money into a shared account, this amount varies by the capital available to the members and ranges from $4 - $25 a month. Within a VICOBA, the members split into “magnet” groups of 5 members, each magnet group can give a short-term loan to one of its members at 10% interest paid upfront (usually repayment is done over less than 4 months). Every member of the magnet group acts as guarantor to the loan, therefore, trust within a magnet group is essential.

 

After one year, every loan must be repaid, and the community bank account is dissolved. Every deposit is returned to the members and the capital from paid interest throughout the year is distributed among the VICOBA with the members who paid the most interest receiving the highest share. The annual cycle will then begin again, hopefully after a year every member should have higher purchasing power and so the VICBA can consider increasing the monthly contributions. As such, year by year, the community will grow emancipating its members.

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Every VICOBA must have monthly meetings, to share out loans, repay old ones, discuss plans for new businesses or investment opportunities. This allows the members of the VICOBA to create a financial network amongst them but also creates a social bond between them, strengthening their trust and thus their willingness to loan to each other. It is common for members in a group to support each other’s businesses by buying their products or making use of their services.

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WEECE founded the first VICOBA group in the region in the early 2000s. Since then, 15 groups have started and are still operating to this day in the Kilimanjaro region. This means that over 400 women have found economic stability and have started the process towards financial independence. These groups are fully autonomous, allowing the women to be directly responsible for their own empowerment. WEECE only serves as an overseer or an arbiter when required. We also offer consulting to members of our VICOBAs who are in need, either as a one-time meeting to discuss an investment opportunity or by helping them designing a project over several weeks.

WEECE VICOBA magnet structure that allows members to take loans and also the structure allows for easy follow up of the loans taken return and progress
Women empowernment throught groups training the vicoba members with the women education and economic center Mama valeria Mrema

Mama Valeria Mrema in Kiterini

Here you can see the founder of WEECE, Mama Mrema, explaining the VICOBA rules to the group in the vilage Kiterini.

Nganjoni pigs keeping project, aiming at empowering women to be able to generate income that will increase the vicoba capital for credit taking as part of microfinacing

Nganjoni´s new piglets

This pictures shows the villagers from Nganjoni, standing proudly infront of their stable with two new piglets, bought by WEECE thrugh donors.

beeds making training given to the maasai women of the Josho vicoba group the aim of the training is to make the women be aware of the techniques and ways in  which they can make quality products

James teaching Maasai

Shown above is a picture of WEECE worker James in the Maasai village Josho. He teaches the Maasai women about selling beads and braclets so they can have a small income.

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