Microenterprise

During the seven years after receiving its first Shared Interest guarantee, the Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF), South Africa’s most successful group savings and borrowing institution, has increased its client base from 18,000 to 70,000 low-income rural women in the province of Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and the Eastern Cape. During the expansion phase, the borrowers have maintained their better than 99 percent repayment rate. Shared Interest has since approved additional guarantees to assist SEF with its continuing expansion.  This will expand not only the number of individuals who are able to start and sustain their own businesses, but also the number of people who participate in SEF’s innovative HIV/AIDS training program. This program links the education to the borrowers’ regular village center meetings – thus decreasing the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS education and imparting life-saving information to vulnerable communities.

A study of the Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF) HIV/AIDS training pilot program returned strong results. The program includes ten 1-hour sessions during fortnightly village center meetings that focus on gender and HIV (gender norms, domestic violence, sexuality, HIV/AIDS) and on life skills (communication, conflict resolution, solidarity, leadership). The research on the program focused on community mobilization.

The study of the pilot examined 8 villages (pop. 64,000) with 500 loan recipients and 500 controls in order to assess the individual, household and community impacts through surveys of 8,000 individuals at the beginning of the program and at the end of 3 years. The researchers utilized indicators of economic and social well-being, as well as knowledge, attitudes, communication, sexual behavior, social norms, community responses and quantitative measures of GBV, HIV incidence (Orasure saliva assay), and AIDS mitigation.

They found perceived economic and social benefits, shifts in attitudes towards HIV and a sharing of strategies and new behaviors. Some of the new behaviors included: negotiating condom use and leaving abusive relationships, engaging men and youth.  Violence against women in the given communities was reduced by 50%.  The program also positively impacted client recruitment, staff performance and resulted in 20% larger loans. The challenges were seen to be staff time and balancing empowerment with credit discipline. Nonetheless, throughout the process, SEF maintained an overall 99% repayment rate.