Lisitu 0702 Group

Lisitu 0702 is a vibrant group of entrepreneurs. They work very hard because they have encountered several challenges in life, especially financially, and they do not want a repetition of the same. The women comprise of five friends that live in Kafue and are engaged in different enterprises. These women sell kitchen utensils, shoes, clothes and run vegetable stalls. All the women were trained on financial management by Microloan Foundation Zambia; hence they are fully equipped even for a loan.

As a single mother of two beautiful children, Patricia’s life is heavily invested in hard work and the ability to provide for her kids is all she lives for. Being a single parent can be challenging, however Patricia is self-driven and is doing thing she can in her enterprise. This can be seen in the diversity of items in the shop where she sales pots, shoes, clothes for men, toys and grocery items among other things. For the last six years, Patricia has been running her enterprise, before that she was in college, she is 31 years old.

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.