Saidiana

We provide small grants to collectives of women in the DRC. Cash infusions help grant recipients significantly improve their businesses – and those businesses then positively impact the communities they support with fresh food and better services. This is the best intervention method to fund a community's path out of poverty.

We use the merry-go-round program, an economic system in which women come together to support one another as part of a collective. Merry-go-rounds in Lubumbashi can apply for a larger grant from Saidiana to support a collective business. Rather than give the money to one woman, we help the entire collective make an investment in its members' economic future. With a grant of up to $5,000, a merry-go-round can make substantial purchases, whether they be a generator and a refrigerator for a meat market, or dairy cows and a land lease for milk production. Our grants fund projects for our beneficiaries (women in the DRC) to build new or existing businesses.

In 2016, Saidiana made grants that serve 43 women who support at least 182 children and another 66 household members. As of May 2017, we had 22 in-progress projects.

In addition to the 22 in-progress projects we have funded with small grants, we have partnered with the Janet Bokwa House for our Sewing Trade School. While the resident girls are at school, the sewing workshop hosts Lubumbashi women so that they have the opportunity to learn sewing and business skills from a Saidiana staff member.