Glorious group

The Glorious women’s group is based in the Eastern part of Zambia and comprises of 5 women who are all involved in small scale businesses. The women have 17 children, these women are married to business men and some to farmers. All the member of the group are involved mainly in similar businesses like salaula (second hand clothes), vegetable farming, and groceries. The group is requesting their second loan after successfully repaying the previous loan.

The profit of the previous loan was used to boost businesses and to provide daily needs for the families like food, shelter and school fees for children. The businesses of these women are in the busy market of Chipata and their customers are people from within their community.

Catherine Chanza 32 years old is a member of this group. She has a market stall where she sells salaula (second hand clothes). She mostly stocks clothes for women and has desire to start stocking men’s and children’s clothes also. She will use her share of the group loan to top up on her business working capital. Having access to working capital will give her the flexibility to order more stock for her stall whenever needed. The women of this group started their businesses to mainly be able to support their families financially and to be financially independent themselves.

The Microloan Foundation in Zambia lend to female entrepreneurs using the ‘centre’ model. A centre is typically made up of 3-4 sub-groups and these sub-groups almost always have five members. Each centre has its own name and the sub-groups within the centre share the same name. Each person within the group of five women is responsible for repaying her loan but the members support each other and if a member is unable to repay her loan on time, then the group assumes responsibility for repayment. Loan officers provide training to the groups, although it is expected that centre leaders will eventually assume responsibility for providing some of the basic training.

Please note that Zambia is currently experiencing acute food insecurity and water shortages due to the worst drought the country has experienced in nearly 40 years. At this time there is an additional risk that some of the loans from Zambia might be delayed or defaulted. You can find more information here.