This past Thursday, November 20, 2014, CARE International Burundi, in collaboration with national and international partners launched a campaign to promote “Nawe Nuze” for the economic empowerment of women.
Nawe Nuze is an approach initially developed by CARE International in which small groups are formed and supported on innovative ways of saving and accessing credit. At a public forum, group leaders from Muyinga and rural Bujumbura joined to share their personal experiences. The audience learned that with an initial credit of 5,000 FBU 9 (approximately 3 USD), members are able to increase their revenues enough to purchase a cow, land, or a home in just three years.
Among those invited, the head of banks and microfinance institutions announced that they will work with group members, especially after learning that groups provide each other with credit totaling nearly 2 billion Burundian Francs.
FVS-AMADE Burundi is one of CARE’s partners that quickly understood the enormous potential of the Nawe Nuze approach. The Legal Representative, Madame Spès Nihangaza was given the opportunity to resepresent the partners at the forum presented statistics that impressed the crowd.
FVS-AMADE works with 1,319 groups comprised of 42,907 members in four provinces. As of October 31, 2014, these groups had saved a total of 1,873,593,926 FBU (over 1.2 million USD), of which 1,426,876,225 FBU (920,565 USD) was for credit amongst themselves and another 237,335,932 FBU (153,120 USD) was for purchasing school supplies for the orphans in their care — a unique savings area for the nawe nuze groups of FVS-AMADE.
Nawe Nuze has become the foundation of FVS-AMADE’s work. It is thanks to Nawe Nuz that the communities are able to pay for school supplies for the orphans and vulnerable children and they have the opportunity to participate in community based health insurance. It is also the reason that FVS-AMADE created Dukuze Ibibondo micro finance, to respond to the larger credit needs of groups.
