This month in Tanzania we are preparing to start a new round of grants and business training in Usa River, near Arusha.

We support HIV affected widows to start up small businesses in order to be able to support themselves and their children. This month 13 new beneficiaries will be trained in areas such as attracting customers, calculating profit margins and organising savings. They will bring with them a friend or family member to the training so that they will have someone to support them through difficult times. This month’s trainees have already identified the businesses they want to start – which include running a small cafe, making and selling fruit juice and opening a hair salon. Following the training, the ladies will receive a grant to buy the items they need to get started. They will then be visited on a weekly basis by Mondo staff, who will make sure all is running smoothly and profitably!

In the last month our staff have also been visiting previous grant and loan recipients to monitor their progress. Carolyn (our country manager) met Atrisiande and her family. Atrisiande is a widow supporting two young boys and her mother. She used her grant to invest in firewood selling and chicken raising. With the income from sales over the past year she has added two rooms onto her tiny one room home. Now she safely keeps her chickens in the initial room and has two rooms for herself and her family. She is now able to pay school fees and provide three meals per day for her two children, neither of which were possible prior to the grant. Next she will continue to add more chickens to her flock. She is grateful to Mondo for helping to “push her up“.