Training, training and more training!

Private sector organization, Women for Women, is conducting training for 120 women on entrepreneurship once a week for four months. In attendance will be 13 women from Bwiza. The group will learn about small business ventures like making juice, raising poultry, and selling milk.

Karl Deringer, one of our volunteers, has also helped to encourage entrepreneurship by promoting groups of five persons to form teams for trading local resources at markets. They “buy low” at one market and then carry the goods to another market where they can “sell high”. In this way, the teams are learning money management skills. Starting with a loan of about $10 per person, they have been able to pay off the loans after several months. (Left: Members of the cooperative hold salt licks they were able to buy for their cows using their profits.)

Heifer International is also conducting training with 40 community members from Bwiza’s “ABAHUZA” cooperative on effective animal care and husbandry. Since 2008, livestock in Bwiza has grown from 1 cow and 34 goats, to 11 cows and 96 goats. Bwiza residents have expressed the need for more training on how to care for the animals.

In the training, community members will learn the signs of a sick goat or cow so they can identify ailing animals. They will also learn how to administer medicine to the livestock, if the illness is serious. (Right: A trainer teaches the group about proper grazing for cattle.)