From fainting due to hunger, to owning a food business

Dressed in an elegant African fabric attire, Immaculee, a mother of 10 is going about her everyday small-scale business, selling food items, in Karubamba centre, Kayonza District.

Immaculee, 46 years old, separated from her husband over 20 years ago. Raising 10 children all by herself, with no house to live in, no work and no garden to grow crops was very strenuous.

She worked on other people’s farms for food but even then, her children were never satisfied. They would get a little food to eat but never enough to satisfy them.

Later on, she enrolled for World Vision’s Empowered Worldview trainings, which aim at empowering people change their mindset and gain self-confidence to help them become self-reliant and resilient.

“I remember during the trainings, I used to go with a bucket to take home leftover food for my children. We would eat it for three days and those used to be our best days”, recalls Immaculee.

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Immaculee narrates how she went to work in the neighbourhood one day and fainted due to hunger.

 “My children would steal raw food from neighbours because of hunger. It is almost a year now and no neighbour has complained about my children stealing from their gardens”, she adds.

After training, Immaculee joined a savings group where she committed to save Rwf 150 ($0.15) every week, although it was hard for her to get the money. She later got Rfw 15,000 ($14.91) from the Ultra-Poor Graduation programme, and began thinking of ways she could use it as her start-up capital for a business.

The next day she hit the road to buy beans to start her business. “I started with Rwf 8,000 ($7.95) and in two days, I had Rwf 13,000 ($12.92) after putting aside food for my family”, she says.

Savings groups have helped Immaculee grow her business through the loans she gets from them. “Before, no one would lend me even a penny because I would never pay back; not because I did not want to but because I was not able to. I lived a life of conning people for survival”, Immaculee adds.

Through joining a savings group, Immaculee can now also easily access loans which have helped her expand her business.

According to Shaban, Immaculee’s 11-year-old son, “Sometimes we would spend two days without eating, and we would be too weak to go to school. Today we can have three meals and even have porridge with sugar.”

One thing that has stayed on Immaculee’s mind from the training is the story of creation in Genesis. She learned that in Genesis, God created man and put him in charge of the garden of Eden. God told him to work and take care of the garden. To Immaculee, her family is her garden and she pledges to work for them.

Immaculee plans to expand to agribusiness through getting a loan from VisionFund.