08 May 2014

Members of the Grass Roots building Our Wealth Programme (GROW), which seeks to reduce poverty and empower the community, have started to reap what they sow a year back.

Speaking at a recent GROW progress update event hosted by Hope Worldwide Botswana and Project Concern International (PCI) in Molepolole, the director of Hope Worldwide Botswana, Ms Kedibonye Malejane said GROW had shown progress since its inception and the intention of the programme was being realised.

"GROW seeks to empower women through community savings.Throughout the district women and men meet to discuss family, business, HIV/AIDS issues, inequity and finally support each other through fellowship,” said Ms Malejane.

She said when the programme was first introduced in 2013, Hope Worldwide Botswana had realised that communities were not informed about GROW. However, with the help of community leaders and PCI, her organisation had to work hard to make people understand the concept behind the Programme.

She said nevertheless they had managed to draw people into the programme, resulting in 18 groups with 328 women and 29 men in the Kweneng District. Ms Malejane said because the programme’s mandate was to empower people, the groups opened bank accounts and have a combined amount more than P57 000 as savings.

This money is for the benefit of members as per policies of their groups. The main objective of GROW is to empower an individual to realize a better life opportunity through their potential and talents – another poverty eradication tactic.

She said she believed that poverty was a state of mind, and so the programme sought to change the mind set to the one inclined against poverty. She explained that the objective of Hope Worldwide Botswana was to engage relevant officials to empower the groups with effective tools for a better life while PCI was there to support the projects financially.

She applauded the Barclays Bank for encouraging and assisting GROW with information about bank savings and facilitating information concerning banking in general as well as donating more than P800,000 to help the programme.

The bank’s Public Relations Officer, Mr Sakaeyo Baitshepi, applauded the GROW groups for the positive life changing results they were reflecting. He said Barclays Bank would continue to guide and give tips on the money related topics to the groups.

He said the group members should continue asking for help if they did not understand other things concerning their savings and accounts. Ends