We have just received a report from Clavery, a Social Innovator in Tanzania. In the spring of 2020, he was part of our Vuka small business start-up cohort Vuka small business start-up cohort and used the business grant to open a shop in his community.
We are astounded at what he has accomplished with only a $1000 start-up grant. He writes:
Today I just want to say thank you to the staff at Loom International for being a good coach to me and my family and the business. The community has now known our shop and the shop is moving on so well. It had lots of ups and downs but today this business helps a number of families. Our small business has grown to be able to pay for monthly electricity bills, church contributions, helping relatives and a few people who are in need.
Our house helper Irene was able to go to college through the business and just graduated from Teachers’ College. My wife and I asked her one day who she would want to become in future. She mentioned she wanted to be a teacher. Now she is a professional teacher with a certificate of teaching children with special needs and children with disabilities. Our schools need more teachers like her.
From our small shop, we expanded our business to start a green farm where we grow crops of different kinds to feed our village.We do drip irrigation by growing tomatoes and cucumber, as well as green vegetables. We have expanded into poultry too. In August, small scale business men and women along the highway were coming to our farm and taking chickens by loan, and paying us back after sales. This is helping them feed their children at home.
Through Loom’s ideas of entrepreneurship and support we have employed 5 young men, 2 old men,and 1 young lady who works at our shop. Our vision is to help families in this season and maintain our shop and farm so as to continue serving our community and families.
As you will read in this year’s annual report, we have sat this year on the edge of a new collaboration called Thrive Africa – more than 50 education, health, and entrepreneurship projects in 35 nations across the continent. It is built around the conviction that we add strength and momentum to each other as we work to see communities thrive.
Clavery and Mary’s story captures the core of Thrive Africa. A $1000 investment in a small shop results in:
- A teacher receiving a college degree and now impacting her community
- Children with disabilities receiving new services at their school
- A community with a shop in walking distance with healthy and affordable food
- An agricultural project launched that creates seven new jobs in their community and enables many more families to feed their children.
- Church getting funded and the economically poor assisted
This is Thrive Africa. This is what it means to stand with people of power and wonder, and be in awe of how much they can do with so little. The past eighteen months have demonstrated that the strategy of standing with people of power and wonder is effective. Through pandemics and severe lockdowns we have continued to see local leaders stand and bring Shalom. We have wept together, rejoiced together, prayed and dreamed together. We have worked on budgets and spreadsheets, contracts and policies and we are ready. The time is now.
We would like to invite you to join us in this initiative. We are now on the edge of taking what we have done to scale. We want to give you the opportunity to invest in the launch of Thrive Africa: to join us in standing with people of power and wonder and to play a significant part in a fifteen-year movement that will impact over 42,000,000 lives.
Our goal is to raise $50,000 towards the initial launch and twenty-five $1000 start-up grants for Social Innovators – a total of $75,000, as special gifts or monthly donations.
You may have also heard that due to a provision in the CARES Act that expires on December 31, many can deduct charitable gifts up to 100% of their AGI this year. Please consider taking this opportunity to join a movement of grassroots projects unleashing the potential of communities across Africa.
