TWIN implement several interventions focused at improving the livelihoods of women and girls as details here under.
Income generating projects.
We support women groups with income generating projects focused at enhancing their economic status and to break the cycle of poverty and dependency syndrome. We empower women economically because they reinvest 90% of their income into the family, compared to 30 to 40% by men. This means women spend more on their children, food, shelter, and education, which creates long-term social and economic gains for their communities. This makes them an integral part of ending the cycle of poverty.
Women saving self-help groups project.
One of the powerful approaches used by TWIN to women empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs). This strategy had fetched noticeable results among the groups we have supported. TWIN has used Women self-help groups as tool for various developmental interventions among the women. Women in rural areas are faced with many challenges to access credit from banks and credit institutions just because most of them do not have any assets to be used as collateral. The high interest rates on loans discourage rural women with small and medium businesses to access loans.
TWIN organizes women in saving self-help groups because it is conceived as a sustainable people's institution that provides the poor rural women with space and support necessary for them to take effective steps towards achieving greater control of their lives. The SHG approach has proved successful not only in improving the economic conditions through income generation but in creating awareness about health and hygiene, sanitation and cleanliness, environmental protection, importance of education and better response for development schemes.
TWIN has built the capacity of 85 women groups to develop savings self-help groups which are ready to receive loans to increase capital in their businesses. Several training sessions are organized and conducted for each group to ensure that they fully understand the savings and loans strategy through savings self-help groups.
Supporting small and medium enterprises of women groups.
Ugandan women are disadvantaged in the labour market. Less than 12% of economically active women are in paid employment; the remainder are either self-employed or contribute unpaid family labour. Women own about 40% of the private enterprises in Uganda, mostly at the micro enterprise, informal level; very few women-owned firms grow beyond 5-10 employees.
Women’s enterprises represent a sizeable and untapped source of future employment and economic growth in Uganda, with potential for making a greater contribution to the country’s poverty reduction targets. Ugandan women face many socio-cultural, legal, familial, and economic barriers impeding the growth of their enterprises.
TWIN recognizes the role of women entrepreneurs (small and medium sized) have done to the economy of the country. Women entrepreneurs are faced with many challenges that we at TWIN try to address to ensure that their enterprises are supported and enhanced to high level. When supported to thrive they increase on the availability of jobs to the youths and other women and also increase on the number of other women that can open more small and medium enterprises.