Ultra-Poor Graduation project gives Yoshwa a new lease of life
Many refugees in Mantapala settlement, Zambia, struggle to meet their basic needs and face a bleak future. However, this is not the case for Yoshwa Katuta, 31 who has a thriving business as a result of World Vision Zambia's Ultra-Poor Graduation Project.
Attending to his customers one after the other, Yoshwa, sits happily in his mobile money kiosk as he reflects how challenging his family’s life was two years ago and how World Vision Zambia has transformed his life.
To find peace and safety, Yoshwa, together with his wife, Musalu, 28, and their three children fled their country due to conflicts and wars in 2020.
Though living with a disability, Yoshwa was determined to move his family from a conflicted area to a secure and safer place.
“My experience with what was happening in our country was not a good one, every time we moved to a place we thought was better and safer, conflicts were also there,” Yoshwa recalls. “The hardest part was to witness people dying from bombings.”
With nowhere to rest or sleep, Yoshwa and his family spent their nights at any point where night would find them. Their daily prayer was to be safe and alive as they hoped for a brand-new day.
With a long journey ahead of Yoshwa and his family, the little food they had carried finished.
“We had no food to eat, sometimes we slept on empty stomachs and other days we dug out tubers and cassava from people’s fields just to sustain our lives. Seeing my children crying because they did not have food broke my heart,” Yoshwa narrates. “I did not have anything to give them.”
Hope for Yoshwa and his family was restored when they arrived at the Zambian border, with so much anxiety and happiness, Yoshwa could not wait to settle to start life afresh.
“When we reached Zambia, we were welcomed and taken to the transit center, and a few weeks later, we were transferred to Mantapala Refugee settlement,” narrates Yoshwa.
During his in the transit centre, he and his family depended on handouts from UNCHR and its partners. When they moved to Mantapala Settlement, they had to find sustainable ways of livelihoods, Yoshwa started a small-scale shoe-repairing business to feed his family.
In 2021, World Vision Zambia through the Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) model conducted a series of trainings for the people living in the settlement and the host community members. The pieces of training aimed to empower the most vulnerable households to help them become self-sustainable.
Yoshwa, is one of the people who benefited from the training. After completing his training in Empowered World View, he was empowered with a sum of $198.00 (K5, 000 ZMW).
“This was a turning point for my family and I. God had sent World Vision Zambia to my aid and transform my life,” says Joshua.
In fear of misusing the money, Yoshwa and his wife decided to start a mobile money business in order to grow the money and help people save.
“I invested the money that I received from World Vision by opening an MTN mobile money business just here in the settlement so that I can grow my money at the same time to help people secure their money by saving it in mobile money,” he says.
Yoshwa says the knowledge he attained from World Vision’s pieces of training has not only transformed his life but that of many other people living in the refugee settlement.
From the $198.00 (K5,000.00) Yoshwa, received from World Vision, he has been able to double the money to $396.00) K10,000.00.
“My dream is to fully provide proper meals for my children and ensure that they are educated up to tertiary level because I don’t want them to go through what I have been through. I want them to excel, to become ministers or doctors,” Yoshwa says with a smile.
He hopes to open more booths within and outside the settlement so that he can grow his business and become financially stable.
Like Yoshwa, World Vision has globally impacted the lives of over 200 million vulnerable children by tackling the root causes of poverty and provides a family with tools to overcome poverty.
