Rural Women Entrepreneurship Support

Challenge

In rural communities, women congregate in informal agricultural groups but lack skills in finance, functional literacy, marketing, new production techniques and management. Their ability to start income-generating activities is hindered due to a lack of understanding of basic accounting rules and substantial working capital.

Solution

Migrate women’s informal agricultural groups to Simplified Cooperative Societies (SCOOPS) where they can learn to grow their agriculture business.

• Draft statutes and rules of procedure.
• Open bank accounts.
• Facilitate administrative procedures with the government.

Provide SCOOPS with equipment and micro-financing to support agricultural activities.

Women need new equipment to increase their output. Most of them also need a small amount of startup capital to execute their business plans.

Raise awareness of required documentation/National ID Cards

• Share information about the purpose of the project, and the implementation process through awareness campaigns.
• Outline the administrative procedures to be carried out.
• Ensure the availability of local authorities to support the project.

Strengthen organizational and productive capabilities of agro-pastoral group members.

Women need training to learn new skills and manage their Income Generating Activities (IGA) in areas such as: local cooperation, simplified accounting, and procurement.

Provide adult functional literacy

Our field surveys reveal that 95% of women within the SCOOPS are illiterate. They rely on literate men to run their accounting and other management duties.

This project is designed to allow SCOOPS members to acquire basic skills in reading, writing and numeracy in local languages of Ewe and French to better manage their SCOOPS and AGR.

The project has two components:

• Basic literacy, consolidation, and post-literacy with learning assessments; and
• Follow-up throughout the implementation phase.