Charlie: Farmers grow businesses with group loans

I have to be honest. I really thought that during this second mission we’d see and experience much the same as what we saw last year. Boy was I wrong. Today was the first day at EBO SACCO also in the Bushenyi region outside of Mbarara. After the initial meeting with the Manager and the Chair where high prioity issues and challenges were discussed we were treated to lunch at a local eatery. The most interesting parts of our visits are always the community visits and tours that we do. Today we visited a local secondary school and two groups of farmers - one banana, the other poultry. This SACCO has an interesting loan strategy where they lend to groups of farmers as opposed to individual - as individually these farmers would not qualify for a loan - as a group they are able to pool their resources and all benefit from the financing to help grow their businesses. Kind of like a co-operative borrowing from a co-operative. - Charlie