The people of Takalafia Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 7:43 am
Ladi, Hannatu and Mary have a few things in common…they are women, they live in Takalafia community, they are traders; and they need support to grow their businesses so they can better support themselves and their families.
The community they live in – Takalafia – is a village located abut 20 miles outside Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. Though that doesn’t seem really far in terms of distance, this community is really remote. There just isn’t any easy way to get there. All “roads” are almost impassable. Just from that perspective alone, the challenges the residents of this community face are considerable.
Poverty Stops Here began our partnership with this community in 2009. About 500 people lived there. They were mostly farmers (still remains the case today), with little access to clean water, and no access to sanitary latrines. Most of the residents continue to survive on just one meal per day.
PSH built a hand-pump well for the community back then. At the time, a local church was in the process of building a school. This well would serve as a source of clean water for the children at the school. Since then, we have provided other forms of support, including school supplies.
However, in addition to Clean Water and Sanitation, PSH also works on providing access to business microloans to try to help individuals launch and expand ventures to improve the general economy of the community.
On that note, we return to the ladies we mentioned at the start of this post. Ladi and Hannatu are both foodstuff traders, while Mary deals with textiles. Each of these ladies needed funds to expand. They were each recommended to us through the process we have in place to identify potential trustworthy individuals (with the help of our partner organization and local institutions). In the middle of this year, 2011, PSH provided them with microloans for the amounts they required to get things moving.
Women preparing food in Takalafia
They are now well on their way to taking their ventures to the next level and, in the process, uplifting the community. We have provided similar loans to others in Takalafia, and are working on doing even more.
In 2012, we plan on investing much more in Takalafia, as in our other partner communities. In addition to microloans, we will also be concentrating on clean water and sanitation. We will stay with them for the long haul, to ensure that the change we bring to their lives is truly transformative.
As always, we are grateful for your support. You make all of this possible.
Please go to our website to get a T-Shirt and support our cause.
The PSH Team
Tags: Communities, Updates
