Support Programme for Single Mothers
After many years of working in rural Angola, through Demining, MgM was able to learn a lot of the culture of the different provinces and also see the major problems affecting each of them. Children are the ones mostly affected by these issues, due to the lack of infrastructure to help them grow safely. Demining had a huge impact as we were able to create confidence and safety for infrastructures to be built. This brought connection to previously isolated areas through roads and safe travel. This then led to the building of schools, health care centers and food as fields were safe to be cultivated.
Although this helped communities immensely there are still a lot to do and the best way to help, at the moment, is focusing on the children. Creating conditions for children to grow healthy and strong, is the key to creating self-sustaining communities. Education and a stable source of food is paramount for the growth of a community. Due to so many factors we continue to see abandoned children and children without enough nourishment to strive.
With the aim of helping families to be able to support themselves MgM has created a programme for the single mothers. These are the ones facing the hardest times, no partner to share the living costs nor to help with taking care of the children while they are working.
Normally these females work on the streets selling goods. The children, if they are young enough, will go with them, on their back, but by the age of 3 the mothers cannot do their work with them, so they are left on a corner of a street unattended, maybe if they are lucky with an older sibling asking for food or money to survive.
Some mothers really try to keep their children together. MgM has found a way to help them achieve this. We give a selected group of females a start-up for them to be able to get a business going. Dry fish is one of the staple foods for locals, and a suitable business due to demand.
Project layout
MgM will give the first batch for free. This will allow them to sell one part and keep the rest to feed the children. From there these females will start paying a percentage of the fish they take. Small at first but it ends up with full payment, with MgM only being responsible for the start-up and the transport of the fish from the seaside to Lubango.
Lubango is 160Km away from Moçambedes, and another 30 km from Baia das Pipas the beach where we purchase all the fish. Woman there have the same problems as there are no permanent residents, taking out the small local population (around 200 people), the rest are people that have their beach houses but live in Lubango. They also need help to be able to raise their children, so we decided to make an agreement with them and purchase all fish there. This way we are helping two communities in one go.
The repayment schedule is simple to calculate; they have their first month supply for free and then each consecutive month they pay 10 % more.
When one person gets to pay 50%, we get a new one to start the project, this way the we can continue to help more mothers.
Results
MgM’s has a lot of success stories, we have ladies that have opened their own little stand and continue to purchase the fish with us. Every week we receive requests to add another mother, specially from the rural areas in the interior. MgM doesn’t have at the moment the possibility to extend to other areas but we hope that in the future we could move our projects to more communities around Huila province. The important is trying to help families stay together and live a more dignifying life.
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