Micro-Business Initiatives

Micro-Business Training

We had a wonderful opportunity to train 94 widows in micro-enterprise training funded by Women In the Window International (WiW). For the first time, this training was led by six widows who had been trained in 2019 in the same course.

During the training, the women studied Biblical women in business, mapped their talents and market opportunities in their communities and developed business plans for varied products/services they wanted to offer.

They studied the four legs of marketing (product, price, promotion and place), and the need to invest in every leg to ensure the sustainability of their businesses. They learned how to set the price for their products, accounting for all the production costs and profits, and to keep proper records for their businesses.

Pamela, one of the widows in the training, marveled at how she had underpriced her groundnuts in her micro-enterprise. She never paid herself in her business, which is a common issue for women in micro- enterprises. She also hardly accounted for other related production costs such as the cost of travel to the market, the cost of communications or meals during purchase of inputs for her nut business. Since she measures the nuts she sells using a teaspoon, she left the training committed to know the number of teaspoons in a 2 kilogram bag of nuts, to appropriately estimate prices.

Table Banking

Through a savings program called “table banking” the widows pool financial resources and then borrow from these resources based on their shares in the group. We provide micro-credits for the widows to pool which helps enable the widows to build their businesses. The borrowed money is meant for strengthening and expanding the businesses ventures the widows embark on. After a period, the borrowed money is returned with a 10% interest. The interest increases the pool of money available for borrowing.