Women's Economic Empowerment
Women's Economic Empowerment Programme
The Path out of Poverty
Our mission is to reach underserved women in rural Uganda who run small businesses to support their families but have been left behind. We pair practical business skills, fair access to working capital and mentorship to help them build their own pathways out of poverty.
Reimagining development means designing approaches that address the root causes of poverty and giving women the agency to decide for themselves what these solutions need to look like. It requires working within local realities, strengthening existing community structures, and enabling people to drive their own progress.
Our programme is not just about empowerment. It’s about building self-sustaining solutions that allow women and their children to rise above poverty with dignity and hope. Showing them that their hope for the future rests within their own hands.
How we support women
Skills, savings, capital and ongoing business mentorship work together to help women build sustainable livelihoods and boost economic inclusion.
01
Skills & Financial Training
Practical skills and financial knowledge help women earn an income, understand their costs and plan for their businesses.
02
Savings Behaviours
Regular group meetings help women build savings habits, plan ahead and support one another as they work towards their goals.
03
Start-up & working capital
Capital for stock, tools and productive assets helps women put their skills into practice and develop their enterprises.
04
Mentorship & ongoing support
Local coordinators provide continued guidance, helping women strengthen their businesses and work through challenges along the way.
The First Phase
Where we started
Our programme began by bringing women together to develop practical skills and strengthen their ability to earn. Training in soap-making and other income-generating activities was paired with financial education to help women put those skills into practice.
Alongside this, women formed savings groups, meeting regularly to save, share experiences and support one another. These groups created a foundation for continued learning, stronger financial habits and the development of individual and shared enterprises.
Our 3-Part Model to Poverty Alleviation
We’ve built our approach around the belief that training alone isn’t enough. Women also need financial knowledge and access to capital in order to succeed. That’s why our model combines all three.
1. Vocational Training
Teaching practical skills such as tailoring, baking, craft making, animal rearing, and soap production, giving women immediate ways to earn an income.
2. Financial Literacy
Equipping women with the knowledge to budget, save, and make informed business decisions, so their income leads to long-term security.
3. Micro Lending
Offering fair, accessible loans of $100–$200 through group-based lending, enabling women to launch or grow small businesses without predatory interest rates.
Financial Literacy Training
In Partnership with Vine Microfinance
Vocational training was followed by structured, practical financial training to help women understand how to turn their skills into revenue-generating activities.
These sessions are not classroom lectures. They are interactive, applied, and rooted in daily reality, covering:
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Basic money management — tracking income and expenses
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Pricing and profit — understanding costs, margins, and reinvestment
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Saving habits — even with irregular and very small incomes
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Loan readiness — what it means to borrow responsibly and repay consistently
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Group accountability — how group guarantees work in practice
Training is delivered before and alongside lending, ensuring women understand not just how to access capital, but how to protect and grow it. By pairing skills training with financial literacy, we are preparing women to become credible borrowers, capable of engaging with formal financial systems over time.
Banks will not lend without a savings history, repayment behavior, or financial discipline. We begin building that foundation here.
Some of our women-led businesses:
Hair Salon
Food Stalls
Tailoring
Animal Rearing
Each woman used her loan to launch or expand a small business, building on the skills she had already developed, most commonly soap production, alongside tailoring, food sales, animal rearing, and other locally driven enterprises. While each business is independently owned, the women remain connected through their savings groups, which meet weekly to share progress, exchange ideas, discuss pricing and marketing, and support one another through challenges. These group meetings reinforce accountability while creating a collaborative space where learning continues well beyond the initial training.
