Seed capital for village mothers

THE PNG Micro-Finance is now helping a group of 10 settlement financially-handicapped mothers to start with a livelihood project that will  enable them to earn an  income.
The mothers, who live at the ATS Oro settlement at 7-Mile outside of Port Moresby, have just received their Micro-Finance savings passbook after making a deposit of K50 each as their starting balance, for a total of K500.
They belonged to that group which normally did  not have access to the services of commercial banks, Micro-Finance said.
Once they have saved a minimum of K300 each, they could apply for a low-interest seed loan capital for activities they would like to start with like buying and selling.
The individual bank account deposits were made possible by the Tembari Children Care (TCC) Inc as part of its livelihood sustainability programme for settlement mothers doing volunteer works for TCC.
TCC, which is a day care and orphanage centre, has also provided a counterpart amount of K500 as seed capital assistance to the mothers to start them off with small business like selling betel nut, smoke, lollies and vegetables, among others.
Penny Sagembo, TCC founder, told The National that from the counterpart fund, each mother received a seed capital of K50 each through which they would buy their goods for reselling.
The K1,000 funding that TCC had made available to the volunteer mothers came from money donated by charity groups and funding institutions.
Every fortnight, each of them will repay the seed capital assistance at the rate of K20.
“Some of the mothers started selling their wares early last week and are doing good … they have already set aside the first K20 from their profit to repay the seed capital and another amount which they would deposit in their individual bank accounts,” Sagembo said.
The mother participants who are considered by TCC as financially-handicapped have children who are being looked after by TCC.