A spot check by ProjectM at kumilonde village,T/A Chikowi in zomba has established that a lot of jobless women have forever and anon survived through village savings and loans group amid social economic challenges.
On April 7 ,2023 projectM embarked on a remarkable journey to visit the TIGWIRIZANE village savings and loans(VSL) group which provides banking services and loans to the citizenry to find out what is it that the group is doing for sustainable social economic growth.
TIGWIRIZANE VSL women’s group which is vibrant and self sustaining that is capable of providing social economic services in the currently unserved rural Zomba was established in 2012 and accumulatively it has a total number of 21 members .
In a freewheeling conversation with ProjectM, the group’s secretary Catherine Mauzu was in her own class as she explicitly stated that she has managed to construct a 32 corrugated iron sheet house and is also paying school fees for her form 3 child in secondary school thereby acknowledging the support and contributions provided by the group.
Mauzu however, advocated that despite these achievements, effective implementation of planned programmes continue to face numerous challenges.
Firstly she touched base on inadequate human resource capacity, where she complained that their group is failing to make it classy for want of money as they can only raise less than a million kwacha for a period of 6 months through contributions.
Secondly, she also made some revelations that more often than not the group lacks capacity building trainings in business management skills.
“In 2012 ,we facilitated the establishment of a VSL group inorder to promote a culture of saving as well as to ensuring that women can become economically empowered.But since then we have never had any training sessions to impart the women with financial literacy and business management skills”,said Mauzu.
She then appealed to government and non governmental institutions to provide the group with human resource and financial trainings that will help them to understand what profit is all about and also enabling entrepreneurs to start and expand their businesses.
Apparently,in it’s pursuit to successfully attain the desired outcomes Tigwirizane VSL group is calling on all women from hither and thither to join the band wagon by joining VSL groups instead of each time demanding financial support from their spouses inorder to actively be self reliant and independent.
According to our investigations, the Marital life for all women who joined the TIGWIRIZANE VSL group has changed for the better such that each individual is operating a small scale business and have also managed each to build a corrugated iron sheet house,feed their families and are able to pay school fees for their children in secondary school.
