{"id":8990,"date":"2019-03-07T16:05:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T16:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/?p=8990"},"modified":"2019-03-07T16:48:20","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T16:48:20","slug":"a-better-life-for-alice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/a-better-life-for-alice\/","title":{"rendered":"A BETTER life for Alice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alice Mtope and her husband began caring for her late brother\u2019s children when they were orphaned.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8993 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day-300x89.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"89\" srcset=\"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day-300x89.png 300w, https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day-768x229.png 768w, https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day-100x30.png 100w, https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day-877x261.png 877w, https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day-400x119.png 400w, https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/international-womans-day.png 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>It put a huge burden on her, a burden that she struggled to carry before she joined a village savings and loans group (VSLA) being supported by BETTER, a EU-backed multi-agency project being coordinated by Self Help Africa, in Malawi.<\/p>\n<p>Nominated to be the VSLA coordinator in her village, Alice soon had 70 people involved in the group. She took a small loan herself, and used it to build a piggery and buy a breeding sow that soon provided her with five piglets that she could fatten and sell.<\/p>\n<p>Trained in savings and loans group management and provided with business skills, Alice says that her activities have enabled her to provide better food for herself and her family, while she has also started saving so that she can afford to pay the kids school fees in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Village Savings and Loans groups are a key component to the BETTER programme, which is providing rural poor communities with skills training in different farming practices, in the promotion of new crops, and in other activities designed to help poor households to increase their farm production and their incomes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy promoting VSLA groups and helping people like Alice improve their livelihoods, we are helping families to accumulate assets and savings, so that they are better able to cope with future shocks that may occur,\u201d explains Self Help Africa\u2019s Ulemu Chiluzi.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, the project trained more than 400 village based \u2018community agents\u2019 to lead on the recruitment and delivery of village savings groups. Alice and the other agents received bicycles to help them with transport, and by year-end the new VSL network had group to over 4,000 members.\u00a0 In 2019 the project will recruit and train an additional 365 agents, and is ultimately aiming to form more than 1,000 groups, and bring more than 14,000 people into the savings and loans network \u2013 80% of whom are women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since joining a village savings and loans group (VSLA), Alice used a small loan to build a piggery and buy a breeding sow that soon provided her with five piglets that she could fatten and sell. <\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/a-better-life-for-alice\/\"> Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8992,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[676,686,677,637],"tags":[552,814,628,211,747,845],"class_list":["post-8990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-study","category-enterprise-development","category-malawi","category-news","tag-business","tag-entrepreneur","tag-farmer","tag-malawi","tag-mother","tag-woman"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.4 (Yoast SEO v23.4) - 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