A network of women's groups is helping women build their savings, small businesses, and leadership potential.
Wizeru Mesfin used to rarely leave her one-room home, “not even for food,” she says. Living with a disability that limits her mobility, Mesfin was not very outgoing and was accustomed to leading a secluded life.
Things changed when Mebrit Kesaye came to see her one day. Kesaye leads a self-help group, essentially a savings and loan association, and she recruited Mesfin to join the group in their neighborhood in Sekota, a small city in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.
“She told me, even if I don’t have money, just come and talk,” Mesfin says. Mesfin joined the group, and eventually started saving money and got a loan to invest in a new business: buying dresses that she embroiders and sells to women who need a new outfit for a wedding or other special occasion.
Access to capital to invest in her business and membership in a group of supportive women opened up a new life for Mesfin. “I was happy to join,” she says. Being a member of the group “is helping me save some money and start my business, and I can pay my rent.”
“I am now a more independent woman."
Assets to match a mindset
Independence is a quality Kesaye highly values. The self-help group she joined helped her work her way out of poverty. It’s one of 16 groups started by Women’s Empowerment-Action (known as WE-Action), an organization Oxfam works with in Amhara.
Kesaye had been doing laundry, and baking and selling injera (a fermented flatbread popular in Ethiopia), but she was barely earning enough to support her three children. “We suffered a lot,” Kesaye says. She wanted to do more. “I had a business mindset, but no money to work with.”
As soon as she could, Kesaye started borrowing money. She bought some sheep, bred several more, sold some, and hired a shepherd to bring the sheep to grazing areas. She paid back her loans and started saving money.
With more loans, she installed a metal roof on her mud-walled home at the top of a steep, rocky hill, where on a sunny morning neighborhood children run and play among the cactus plants. Kesaye added a large room on the back she now rents for additional income. She says she is now financially independent. “I can now buy my kids whatever they need, including clothing and shoes.” She points out her television and other valuable possessions in her home, all paid for with her newfound income and savings.
A leader emerges
Kesaye’s involvement in the savings and loan group also led to a new role: group leader. She helped establish the 18-member group in her neighborhood and recruited members like Mesfin to join.
Kesaye’s style of leadership is very inclusive. While developing her communication skills, she instituted rotating leadership of group meetings as well as in the roles for secretary and finance head.
“I believe in sharing responsibilities so everyone feels involved and can understand the different roles. People tell me they appreciate how I help them develop their skills to read, count, and learn financial skills.”
An added value of the self-help groups goes well beyond learning how to save money, use loans to start businesses, and other financial matters. Leaders like Kesaye attend training sessions with WE-Action to learn about sexual and reproductive health and human/women’s rights. They then impart what they learn to their group members.
Tamtiru Tadesse, a social worker with WE-Action, affirms the training model works well in Kesaye’s goup, thanks to her enthusiasm. “When she gets training at WE-Action, she shares what she learns with the group so they have more knowledge.”
Understanding how to save money and getting more capital for her business has not solved all of Mesfin’s business challenges, and she acknowledges that her business can be slow and not very profitable at times. She’s still a quiet, somewhat shy person who struggles to get some of her clients to pay their bills. Nevertheless, she is more confident. “Now that I am more engaged in the community,” she says, “it gives me hope that I never had before.”
Solidarity in trying times
WE-Action, Oxfam’s partner in Amhara, helped women around the city of Sekota set up 16 self-help groups starting in 2019. Tadesse Eshetu, who runs WE-Action in Sekota, says the groups now have about 6,000 women members, and about half of them have started small businesses, such as making prepared foods, running restaurants and mini-shops selling food and drinks out of their homes, or starting handicraft businesses.
One hundred forty-seven members are now also involved in decision-making roles in village councils and other bodies in their communities. Building their savings helped group members survive the COVID-19 pandemic and a violent conflict between the government and local militias starting in 2020.
“During the pandemic, even during the conflict, we kept meeting,” says Simegn Hailu about the self-help group she leads in Sekota. She says her family lived on the cash she had saved, and the group allowed members to delay their loan repayments.
Kesaye sent her children to another city to keep them safe during the fighting, while she stayed to guard their home and livestock. “We suffered a lot,” she says. “We were all traumatized. I cried every night. Going to the self-help group meetings helped me a lot. We never felt discouraged; we never lost hope in those trying times.”