NGOS INITIAE FUNDRAISING PROJECTS FOR HOHOE (PAGE 53)

Plan Ghana and the Rural Action for the Poor (RAP), both non-governmental organisations, have initiated a project on how to mobilise adequate funds through community-based savings for 10 communities in the Hohoe municipality.
Under the project, dubbed: "The Village Savings and Loans Association" (VSLA), these communities which have formed 20 groups have been trained to mobilise their resources to finance local micro enterprises of their own choice.
The communities are Fodome Amli, Kodzeto, Kpeve Tornu, Alavanyo Abeyinase, Santrokofi Bume, Likpe Mate, Abrani, Liati Wote, Ve Wudome and Nyagbo Odumase.
To assess the capabilities of the groups, RAP, which is implementing the project, has organised a day’s review workshop for members of the groups at Hohoe to find out whether they were making enough profits from their businesses to support their children’s development.
From the workshop, it was realised that the groups, for the past six months, had been able to develop to such an extent that on their own they could sustain their operations.
Some of them have been able to register their members under the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Through their own resources, the groups are able to borrow from funds mobilised to expand their businesses such as trading, palm oil extraction and farming and are repaying in accordance with the constitutions of the groups.
They commended Plan Ghana for the assistance and expressed the hope that they would be able to use the opportunity to improve on their livelihood.
The Volta Regional Programme Area Manager of Plan Ghana, Mr Eric Ayaba, said it was part of Plan Ghana’s expectation that apart from the VSLA groups becoming vibrant and sustainable, they could use funds they had generated to expand their businesses and to repay them for the group’s survival and growth.
He said Plan Ghana intended to support two local NGOs in the Volta Region to increase VSLA groups to 800 with a total membership of 20,000 in the next three years.
For his part, the Executive Director of RAP, Mr George Gyapong, said their aim was to train the groups to collectively save their own money to grant loans among themselves for any development programme that they wished to undertake.
He said after their training, it was the desire of RAP to link the groups to financial institutions to access loans.