Our goal at SustainME is to empower vulnerable women and their families to fight poverty. What we do to achieve this is for example through Microfinance, Economic Empowerment, Healthcare, and Advocacy for Women’s Rights.
MICROFINANCE
SKILLS
LIVELIHOODS
HEALTHCARE
RIGHTS
Through our Microfinance program, SustainME empowers the vulnerable women with small startup loans and seed grants which enables them to start up small businesses and income-generating activities
Access to microfinance provides sustainable solutions and livelihoods for the women and their families. By providing small loans through microfinancing to vulnerable women, we help to build their capacity to provide basic needs for their children and break the cycle of poverty.
Our Microfinance model is simple, friendly and sustainable. It offers every struggling woman an opportunity to access finances for a startup through micro loans, seed grants, village savings and loans groups. It is consistently proven to increase household incomes, social capital and hope.
Skills are key in creating an enabling environment for the vulnerable women to startup and run sustainable livelihoods. As an organization, we empower women with a wide range of skills including business-and-vocational skills and mentorship.
In Uganda, small businesses provide a livelihood to many vulnerable women. Unfortunately, many of the small businesses fail because the women are illiterate and lack the skills required to run a successful business. SustainME supports sustainable businesses through provision of our all-round business and vocational skills training.
We provide long-term solutions to empowering women and their families to run sustainable businesses. We provide business and vocational training and mentorship to the women. Our toolbox consists of experienced trainers and their knowledge, and our locally developed training manuals.
Topics in the business skills training sessions focus primarily on issues that many small businesses struggle with. The weekly training sessions include for example financial literacy, importance of keeping records, sales and marketing, stock management and business planning. While vocational training focuses on providing hands-on skills in sewing, catering, hairdressing and farming.
Sound livelihoods see poor women earn a daily income and are able to provide a meal, school fees and other basic needs to their families.
In fulfilling our mission, we focus our efforts in enabling every mother to start a sustainable income generating activity. With our major goal of enabling women to provide for their families, we are driven by helping them get involved in running economic activities that make it possible for them to increase their household incomes. Wide range of livelihoods including brick making, fishing, fish smoking, restaurant, farming, groceries, local brewing, hair dressing, sewing, retail shops, second hand clothes, food vending are run by the women.
Health is a very important aspect of the family’s well being. Poor health has diverse effects on the performance of the vulnerable women, their families and ends up reducing the household’s incomes as they have to spend more money on medical care.
SustainME provides the women and their families with basic healthcare, preventive information and support including medical treatment for the women and children, sensitization and health awareness, hygiene and sanitation. Working in partnership with health institutions, healthcare is accessed by the poor women and their households.
We believe that families that are healthy are able to grow their livelihoods and in a long run improve on their household incomes.
Our Women’s Rights and Gender Based Violence interventions aim to creating awareness and strengthen social safety nets protecting vulnerable women from physical abuse, sexual abuse and all forms of forms of violence against women that are harmful to wellbeing of women.
By creating awareness in women’s rights to the vulnerable women and communities, we are helping to ensure women are safe from all forms violence.
In particular, we strive to tackle the causes of women’s rights abuse and gender-based violence by working with the vulnerable women, partners and communities. We focus on awareness and advocacy, research and training. Why? Because acts of violence undermine women’s development, their opportunities to fight poverty, their desire to enjoy their rights, and ultimately, their ability to thrive.