Toto Africa Cares!
ToTo Africa focusses specifically on women, especially (single) mothers. Not the Western definition of the word “mother”, but the Ugandan, wider definition. Every woman can and will be a mother to somebody, including our planet. ToTo Africa connects with women leaders in the local community who, through a group process select and identify other woman who will join them in the group(s). The group then jointly identifies which needs they have, which business opportunities they see within their community and how they can create a sustainable economic situation for their families. The aim is not short time financial gain, but long-term sustainability. The women targeted show willingness to learn and put in effort, and they have an entrepreneurial spirit.
The women have expressed their preference of operating and moving forward in a group setting as mobilization of the women into groups gives them more confidence, keeps them motivated, especially during difficult times, gives them a platform through which they can share their (innovative) ideas and thoughts, and gives them more power in the community and financially.
Why?
Uganda’s culture and traditions have created a situation in which women have less access to privileges and economic opportunities than men. For example, traditionally boys received more education and received inheritance in the form of property. While girls were raised to take care of the household, and perform unpaid work, including the more traditional caretakers’ role.
Party due to the tradition of child marriages, or marriage at young age, which results in the women or girls moving out of the house (and the household no longer benefitting from, for example, education) in return for a ‘bride prize”. While most of these traditions are less persistent these days, most women are still facing unequal opportunities as a result of this and the accompanying “stigma”, among other things when it comes to access to financing or entrepreneurship.
# Every Mother is a Doctor without a Medical Degree!
Our Objectives
Break the vicious circle!
Without access to funding, with limited education, and with the cultural boundaries, a lot of women don’t have the opportunity to break the poverty trap they are in.
Create sustainable long-term improvement to the livelihoods
ToTo Africa is not aiming at the short term, one-off wins, but aims to create long term sustainability economically, socially and environmentally.
- Economically. Through creating opportunities for the women to run, individually or as a group, their own small businesses resulting in additional income for their households. Through the set-up of saving groups, and support on financial management, the women are better equipped to deal with future shocks and stress due to illness, climate change or other unforeseen circumstances, and they are skilled to further build their business.
- Socially. Through confidence building through the groups, through support from ToTo Africa, through societal change. ToTo Africa also aims to support where needed with community awareness raising on women rights and other gender related matters, and if requested ToTo Africa can have one-on-one sessions with the husband and wife to gain household understanding of the situation and the opportunities.
- Environmentally. As ToTo Africa is ensuring all solutions and business models are environmentally friendly and minimize contribution to climate change where possible. Furthermore awareness raising on environmentally friendly community approaches is an important element of all support provided.