It is WORTH it!

Household economic strengthening and parenting skills for vulnerable families

In two earlier projects funded by sahee, Fighting the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world and
Child Friendly Schools, Compassionate Swaziland aimed at making schools child friendly while building their capacity in positive health seeking behaviors. In the new project, the focus has shifted towards household economic strengthening.
In Eswatini, orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) can usually not access basic social services (in particular education, health and food) as their parents can hardly afford them. Although the government offers free primary education, it’s the responsibility of parents to provide schools uniforms. However, since most poor parents can not afford school uniforms as they are unemployed or they are elderly people, the children under their care end up not attending school. Instead they engage in child labor so as to earn money to buy food for their families.
The project ''Household Economic Strengthening and Parenting Skills for Vulnerable Families'' seeks to improve the quality of life for vulnerable OVCs in Somtongo Inkhundla and Mpolonjeni Inkhundla through household economic strengthening, child protection and child rights at the household level (WORTH approach). The WORTH (Women Organizing Resources Together) model aims at improving people’s access to and control of their assets and resources. Originally designed as a women’s economic empowerment model, WORTH brings poor, primarily rural women together in groups of 25 for integrated, savings-led micro-finance, literacy, numeracy, group banking, and micro-enterprise development, while strengthening social networks and empowering members to have a voice in their communities. Participants create transparent credit and savings groups that save weekly. Their pooled savings are made available to members in short-term, low-interest loans for primarily income-generation activities.
Within the project of Compassionate Swaziland, female parents and care givers of OVCs are organized in WORTH groups. The expectation is that, through saving, they can start micro-businesses which will improve household income allowing parents/care givers to provide basic educational materials, food, and transport to the OVCs.
In addition, young girls and women are trained in sexual and reproductive health rights, and parents and teachers (men and women) on parenting skills and children's rights.

Project site

Shiselweni (Somtongo Tinkhundla) and Lubombo (Mpolonjeni Tinkhundla) region (Map)

Beneficiaries

1200 women and 1200 men as well as around 2000 children below the age of 16 years.

Project costs and assistance by sahee

The entire project costs are CHF 115’000.–, whereas sahee takes over CHF 93’000.–.

sahee stays in regular contact with the project leaders, monitors the activities and visits the project on site once a year.

Duration of assistance

1st of January 2019 to 31st of December 2021

Local counterpart

Compassionate Swaziland

Project site

compassionateswaziland.org.sz/