{"id":4984,"date":"2016-05-04T12:51:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T11:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/ie\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2016-12-21T14:43:49","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T14:43:49","slug":"enterprisingsamada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/ie\/enterprisingsamada\/","title":{"rendered":"Enterprising Samada’s a role model for others"},"content":{"rendered":"
Samada Masanda’s the leader of her local farmers’ group. \u00a0She’s a small-scale farmer, a business woman, a mother.<\/p>\n
For 38 year old Samada, and for others in her community of Kazinga village in south-west Uganda , life is changing for the better.<\/p>\n
\u2018In the past, parents here didn’t\u00a0bother to educate girls. But now they\u2019ve seen that women like me can be leaders, so they educate all their children.\u2019<\/p>\n
Aged just 17 when her father died, Samada was taken out of school by her widowed mother and was married.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Without\u00a0any formal training, Samada had few options other than to become a farmer. \u00a0option. She has no regrets, and says that 20 years working the land has allowed her to raise a family. She does, however, crave a different story for her own daughters:<\/p>\n \u2018My dream is for my three daughters to complete school so they have the opportunities that I didn\u2019t.\u2019<\/p>\n But school fees are expensive and life in the Ugandan countryside is unpredictable. Support that she received as a member of a\u00a0Self Help Africa savings project helped her however.<\/p>\n Able to access a \u2018booster loan\u2019 of 200,000 Ugandan shillings (\u20ac60), six months ago Samada opened a small store. She now works every day on her farm, and each evening in the store, trading goods she buys at a weekly market. \u00a0She also sells chickens across the border in nearby Democratic Republic of Congo, and buys palm oil and brushes there, that she sells in her small shop.<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t earn a great deal,\u00a0but the diversification of income has given her family a new certainty in life she has long craved. As Samada\u00a0observes:<\/p>\n \u2018Farming and business are both uncertain, but now if one fails I know I can still make money from the other.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Enterprising Samada is a role model for other’s in her village in south-western Uganda<\/p>\n Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[686,637,678],"tags":[68,76,70,110,246,230],"class_list":["post-4984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-development","category-news","category-uganda","tag-agriculture","tag-enterprise","tag-farming","tag-gender","tag-uganda","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nJust two years ago Samada\u2019s harvest failed due to drought. As a result she recalls the family survived for weeks on just one crop: \u00a0\u2018We ate cassava for breakfast, lunch and supper.\u2019<\/p>\n