Grannies weeding their beans garden. This was not their practise before Kitovu Mobile enrolled the project in their area. Photo Credit:Moses Muwulya
By Moses Muwulya,Communications Officer
The full form of TEAM is Together Every One Achieves More, so it is said. Proof to this, is the story of Bukadde Magezi Solidarity group members.
The group is one of the grandmothers Solidarity groups formed by Kitovu Mobile in Kabira Sub-County–Kyotera District.
The eleven member group has since realised significant increase in harvest after they started doing farming as a team.
They join resources, energy, capital and do farming on a larger scale. Larger than what each individual was doing before the intervention of Kitovu Mobile, through the Grandmothers,OVC support project in 2019.
Judith in Red explains that savings was never a culture among them.
As Judith Namuli shares,last they were able to harvest 200 kilograms of beans.
The sixty-year-old says this was hardly realised before.
“One would even fail to weed crops and get losses. But with the new move,such scenarios are solved as they combine efforts,” She explains.
She says if it so happens that they are all weak,they get loan from their group and hire a casual labourer to do it for them.
Besides improvement in output, joint farming has also them to cover up the older grannies.
“Those who are stronger can clear the garden and leave planting,weeding for the and plant and Weers as Nakawojwa stella notes.
This has increased our harvest which has boosted food security.
For Hope Mulungi,the group has helped them to know each other. ” We meet and share knowledge about farming which helps us to move forward”
Savings,
Initially, the members say their savings culture was poor,until when the got financial literacy.
They since learnt the benefits of savings and started right away.
With each member paying shs
500 (0.1 weekly,the group last year ably saved shs 240,000. For grannies who had never saved before, this amount sounded strange in their ears.
With the savings culture improving concurrently with livelihood,the grannies moved to put the share value to Shs 1000($ 0.3)
This move has seen them increase on share capital.
“We are yet to start individual loans as we are still studying our friends,as Judith Namulu shares.