[June 22, 2010]

After several rounds of polite questioning and an especially informative trip to visit some exemplary HIV/AIDS Support Groups, I finally have a firm grasp of our Microenterprise project framework. Here it goes:

• St. Gabriel’s initially established Village AIDS Committees (VACs) of volunteer health workers to help them locate HIV-positive individuals in the surrounding villages who were too apprehensive or fearful to come to the hospital.
• From those VACs, the hospital facilitated the development of Support Groups catered toward those identified patients, and enabled individuals to come together to discuss life with HIV, ways to cope, and means to get help.
• As part of hospital support, the Support Groups receive the community starter packs that I mentioned before – assistance in the form of animals (most often pigs) or tools (like soya seeds or treadle pumps) that could be used to create agricultural businesses and generate a steady supply of much-needed income.

And the challenge? To help empower the community members to actively participate in developing sustainable communities.

While this seems like a huge undertaking, I believe that our mission will be to focus on empowering people economically. Currently, low income levels and the lack of food security are the major contributors to decreased welfare. We have the potential to tackle this problem at the source: to establish sustainable businesses that can provide a steady flow of income. Our strategy will be to provide training in business management, specifically helping them to 1) develop a business plan, 2) learn how to make a working budget, 3) reinforce the concepts of saving for the long-term, and 4) keep a ledger of cash flow – tracking income and expenses over the course of the year.