This is the initial overview of
Hannington's report based on his visit to
women's groups of Padyere County in Uganda.
4th to 11th January 2012.
The creation of these women's groups is a
community development program of
Saint Augustine Community Love (SACL).
These women's groups are, however, independent entities.
The beginning of women's group was purely the idea of Joshua Anywarach, due to some of the reasons highlighted below.
Many women had borrowed money from micro finances within the villages, that had been lending them and they in turn expected a high interest rate from them and hence many would fail to pay back and this resulted into confiscation of their properties.
Families were breaking down due to many of their husbands deserting them because they never wanted to be part of the debts incurred by these women.
Most men in these communities are so reluctant to take care of their children even providing necessities like sanitary pads, so it becomes the work of these women to provide for them.
Because of the extreme poverty in these communities, many women resorted to prostitution as a way of raising some kind of income to help their families.
More to this, there was rampant rape in the communities caused by idleness, influence of drugs like marijuana by young men, alcoholism, and this resulted in the increase of HIV, unwanted pregnancies and an increase in the number of school drop outs.
So it's for some of these reasons that Joshua felt that he should preach to these women to form groups which they obliged to, and indeed the groups were started. He was able to contribute a specific amount of money to each group that these women had formed, it was little but it has helped make a big difference in these women's groups as testified in the video clips.
So it was because of the over exploitation of the small village banks (micro finances) majorly, coupled with other problems mentioned above that led to Joshua start these women groups. As small as a dream may have appeared, it's been much of a successful one that Joshua had to merge these groups with St. Augustine Community Love Programme (SACL).