Establishment of saving and credit scheme in Charambe community
Date
2005
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Publisher
Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
A study was conducted in Charambe Ward at Temeke Municipal through Charambe Development Association (CHADEA). The aim of the study was to conduct needs assessment in order to come up with a proposal to solve some of the existing and pressing community problems. Various problems were mentioned by the CBO leaders, members and some community members; but two problems appeared to be more serious according to the large population of the community. Those problems were unemployment and lack of capital for running and/or expanding the income generating activities.
Specific objectives of the study were to conduct needs assessment in order to ascertain the mentioned/ prioritized needs or problems. The study also aimed at establishing whether the large proportion of the population thought that saving and credit scheme can have positive results. Secondly it was to explore the potential of CHADEA to establish and run the scheme in collaboration with the community members. Thirdly it was to establish if the community members had any idea concerning saving and credit schemes. The CHADEA leaders, members and some community members were interviewed. The interview was done using questionnaires to obtain important information about the characteristics (personal data) and other vital information that can assist in the implementation of the project.
The findings had it that, the community's population which was estimated to have 700 people, 53.3% was women and 46.7% were men. It was also revealed that, the community is poor in the sense that about 81% of the total population earned an income below 50,000 shillings per month on average. Therefore the problem of lack of capital to majority of the community members became evident. It was also established from the survey results that only 15% of the total population were employed, while 59% were engaged in small business undertakings, 12.5% had nothing to do at all and 12.5% were laborers. The problem of unemployment also became obvious. About education level, the findings revealed that 64.9% had primary education level, 30.3%secondary education (ordinary level) 5.2% went to some collages after secondary school and 4.1% had no education at all. The results indicated that CHADEA is well accepted by the community and the projects are run transparently. About the acceptability of the project the survey results indicated that 56.9% said the scheme would be very useful, 29.8% said the scheme would be useful, 9% said it would be useless and 4.3% said they do not know.
Therefore these facts indicated that the large proportion of the community's population thought the project could have a positive impact into their lives. Given these indications of the existence of poverty, and acceptability of the project by a large proportion of the community's population; a project proposal was prepared by the author. The proposal for establishing a saving and credit scheme has been sent to some development partners for grant/loan. The project proposal has been submitted to the African Development Foundation (ADF) to request for Tz shillings 8,720,000 while savings mobilizations is underway to raise some funds internally for the establishment of the project and our target is to collect 600,000 by August 2005.
We intent to start up slowly with the little money that would be internally mobilized in case ADF would not give the loan/grant. After we have started we can request for a loan from SELF because one of their condition is that we must start operations and gain experience before borrowing from them. The project outcomes being the improvement of entrepreneur practices, access to financial services among community members. Also to increase the capacity and commitment of CHADEA to encourage savings and borrowing to large number of entrepreneurs and ensure repayment and effectiveness. (Author abstract)
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