News & Events

Home
Succiess Stories

Anna Exavery has 25 years of age who is in a Modern Girl Programme run by SEGA. She is married with 2 children. She has a primary education. She lives at Kanisani hamlet Mlaguzi village Mlaguzi ward of Mvomero District, Morogoro region in Tanzania. She was running a small business selling cereal products for domestic meals which could not sustain her with families subsistence needs. Now, has expanded her business to not only sustain her family needs but also has started construct family house

Anna says

1. ANNA'S PROBLEM OVERVIEW:

Just like other Tanzanian girls Anna faced numerous social challenges and exploitation that denied of her chance to secondary education and later on to professional edification that might have supported her life secure employment to sustain her life.

Anna like other young women started her own income-generating activities as a solution to lack of access to jobs in the formal sector. However, the efforts were in vain as she had no entrepreneurship skills, lacked access to capita probably through credit from high interest loaning business oriented institutions. In simple terms, Anna had miserable life with lack of entrepreneurship skill, little earning, supply chain for her business, and had no value addition skills.

2. PROGRAM/ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION ANNA UNDERWENT:

Through Msichana wa Kisasa Programme initially, Anna received a little support to initiate a small business in reducing incidences of exploitation. However, the support had little to set her free from all the miserable she was living in. Through SEGA Graduate Business Fund, She was trained on business planning and management with the aim to provide additional entrepreneurship skills and business management. A small loan was provided to her after she developed a small business plan as an outcome from the training she received with the aim to ensure the profitability and selfsustainability of her business enterprise. She was advised to open bank account and her business was monitoring and mentored. She was capacitated to be able to select businesses in line with the market, develop her enterprise, track her progress, and earn a profit.

From the training she has received, Anna can now keep records for her business transactions and developments.

3. PROGRAM/ACTIVITY OUTCOMES:

Before the loan she was running a small domestic goods business with TZS 200,000/- capital. Within less than 8 months Anna's business has expanded with the increased capital and moved from selling cereal product to multiple domestic products. Her life has changed a lot and her mate loved her much. Her From the training she has received, Anna can now keep records for her business transactions and developments. 2 market expanded and she now has more customers. Sha has now started to renovate the house and thinking to build a new one, and from there she will expand her tailoring business.

4. STORY ABSTRACT

Anna says: "I have am equipped with entrepreneurship skills and my business is profitable now. I can sustain my life together with my children. Tanzanian girls face numerous financial and social challenges, including sexual harassment and exploitation at all levels of society.' Though I have no formal job, my business is a formal to me and it keeps me away from sexual harassments."

After the loan of TZS 1,200,000 she bought 20 littles of cooking oil, 100,000 kg maize flower, sardines, star fish, students' exercise books, soap, tooth brush, body and body lotion. She is keeping business records very well. She was not taught to develop a business plan. She has a bank account. She uses the profit from the business to repair the loan. She has successfully finish repair her loan. She is also saving the profit through village community scheme, saving TZS 8,000/- everyday in eight months. She has also bought bricks TZS 400,000/- to expand her business space. Many girls and women in the village admired Anna's abrupt change of her life to better.

5. LEARNING AND RECOMMENDATION :

The fact that in the near future Anna want to increase the loan to TZS 3,000,000/ in expanding her business told us that it is possible to support girls from their miserable life to new self-sustaining lives. This type of support should be extended to many girls as Self-employment through operating one's own business provides more autonomy and reduces incidences of exploitation to girls.

MWAJUMA SHABANI WITH IN HER NEWLY ESTABLISHED GROUNDNUTS AND BEANS FIELD

20th September, 2023

Mwajuma Shabani is married woman with three children. She is now 42 years old living at Mlaguzi village Mkange hamlet Turiani, in Morogoro region. She has not gone to school, therefore she could neither have a job nor could she run a business to sustain her life. The only means to sustain her life with her family was through subsistence agricultural activities from which the harvest could not last for the whole year long. She could cultivate maize as a main food stuff and banana as a supplement food for the family. She could also cultivate beans as a commercial crop from which she could get some money for clothing and medical expenses. "My life," she says, was miserably fun

Mwajuma Shabani

Some few years back, she was selected to join Modern Girl Programme through which she was offered a little of entrepreneurship skills and some other trainings that made her to develop a sense of self-esteem. The skills enabled her to start small business from a small capital she raised after the training. From TZS 100,000/- she started a small domestic grocery selling cooking oil, sardine, salty fish, rice, soap and wheat flour

She applied to join SEGA Graduate Business Fund but was not successful. She was not called to the training and therefore was not given loan during the first phase of the first cohort. The mentorship programme provided by SEGA Graduate Business Fund which were provided monthly enabled her to qualify for the loan in the second phase of the first cohort. She secured a loan of TZS 800,000/- to expand her business in the second phase of the first cohort. With the fund she bought so many business items in bulk

From there, the business started to expand and customers started to increase hence she was starting to make more profit and more saving. She managed to service her loan and she has paid all the loan and expand her agricultural activities. She is now growing groundnuts and beans as cash crops.

Now, Mwajuma can sustains her family. She can buy school uniform for her second born and has bought a bicycle to her first born who is using it to go to school. She can pay for medical services for herself and for her three children. She is planning to expand her farm fields and expanding more her grocer business, but first, I am going to open a bank account

Mwajuma says: "It is possible to change one girl's life. You only need to change one's mind from being pessimistic to optimism. I was very negative when I was thinking of my future with my children. I could not imagine that I could buy even the uniform for my children. But no I have bought a bicycle for my first born."