Review of Tasaaga – Micro-Finance Project, Uganda 2010 by Victoria Page

Blog posted by Victoria Page 

Review of Tasaaga – Micro-Finance Project, Uganda 2010 by Victoria Page

In July 2010 I went to Uganda and volunteered with Tasaaga on their micro-finance project for six weeks. The Project charged $100 per week to cover food and accommodation. I think I found this organisation through searching the internet or in the wse ‘volunteer for development’ brochure (link below).  On finding the project I emailed Tasaaga and Bruhan the organisation director to apply to volunteer.

Accommodation and Food

On arriving at Entebbe airport I and another volunteer were taken to the Tasaaga headquarters/volunteer house. This was a gated house on the outskirts of Kampala. The accommodation was comfortable, we had access to the internet, indoor bathroom, shared bedrooms (which were a little squashed), and a good size garden. We generally stayed here on the weekends and went and stayed in a village where our project was based during the week. In the village the accommodation was very different. I and three other volunteers slept in tents in the garden of one ladies home. There was no shower, well, there was a bit of plastic sheeting wrapped around some wooden poles where you could take a bucket of water to rinse off – I could not get my feet free of the red village earth the whole time in the village, no matter how much I washed! Baby wipes were my best friend in the village – handy for a quick and easy freshening up. There were two pit latrine toilets; a pit latrine is basically a hole in the ground that you squat over. In both Kampala and the village we were fed three meals a day, mainly of posho, rice, beans, sweet potatoes, eggs, eggs and a few more eggs (I am vegetarian and this wasn’t a problem at all).

At times staying in the tent was a little difficult and took some getting used to. I had a frightful morning or two waking up to see a large spider next to me. And having been told before going to the village about the ‘night dancers’ (Cannibals that go and dig up dead bodies to eat whilst dancing to drums, apparently) that lived in the village I was more than a little spooked after the first evening to be woken up at five in the morning by loud drums and singing. It may seem a little extreme to have thought that the night dancers were actually coming to eat us volunteers, but being in a tent in a village without means of quick escape, can make your mind jump to bizarre conclusions. As it happened, this turned out to be a weekly early morning church meeting. The following week I was woken at the same time but by another volunteer who had thought the same thing as I had the week before.

The Project

The basic concept behind micro-finance is that given the access to credit, people will better their own lives through small scale businesses which are more sustainable than giving material or food handouts and can lead to “empowerment” of those involved.   In the case of Tasaaga the recipients were all women and the idea was to combine micro-finance with other social goals – such as education on health and sanitation.

It was obvious that Bruhan had put a lot of research into the microfinance project. The design of the project appeared to be well thought out and Bruhan had good ideas about how he wanted it to run. I say this in relation to the loan repayment period, the amount of interest to be paid on loans, how the profit from the interest was proposed to be spent, what was to happen if recipients defaulted on their loans and initial training for the loan recipients and so on.

Other aspects of the loans had been planned but suffered from a sever lack of manpower in their implementation. The project had been up and running for just over a year when I was there. At this point there had been no evaluation of the project done (this was mine and another volunteer’s primary task). The desired goal of using micro-finance to achieve broader social goals had not been fully developed. The weekly meetings where information regarding health, predominantly HIV, malaria and sanitation was to be relayed to the women, as well as being a source of support for the women in their businesses, had not been taking place. I along with another volunteer began to hold these meetings during our time there and I am unaware of their development since leaving.

Overall I would say the project was well thought out. It was very much in its infancy when I was there and constantly being developed and adapted. But the ideas and passion Bruhan showed for the project and the desired outcomes (social development, increasing the community’s education, health and access to resources) make me believe that with continued attention the project will grow in a positive way. As this project was specifically targeting women, there is a strong attempt to achieve women’s “empowerment”, my recommendations would be for Tasaaga and any future volunteers to encourage male participation in the project in some form or another. Men are intrinsic to the process of changing women’s statuses in society – and without this there is the risk of continuing or worsening women’s subordination and experiences. The example that I think best fits this is that some of the women I interviewed had increased their incomes by huge amounts (in cases from UGS 0, to UGS 30,000) however in some cases a good amount of this went to their husbands who spent it on alcohol at the local village bar (also a project set up from a micro-finance loan). 

The project allowed me to gain great experience. I and the other volunteer on the project designed questionnaires to assess the impact the loans had on the initial recipients. We had to write weekly reports and write ups about the project. We also met with all of the loan recipients, evaluated what could be done to improve the project, held meetings and met with prospective loan recipients and discussed the project with them.

I think this project is very much suitable to someone wanting to gain experience with project design, implementation and evaluation. Volunteers on this project also have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the project as it is in its infancy.

Tasaaga website: www.tasaaga.org

Wse ‘volunteer for development’ brochure: http://www.wse.org.uk/guides/vol.htm

Email: victoriamariepage@hotmail.com