The Story
Barclays has been an organizational bank for Child Protection Society from the beginning of its operations. Through this relationship CPS and Barclays have fostered a long standing rapport which resulted in the bank approaching the organisation in search of meaningful community projects which it could support as a part of its social responsibility.
Amongst other programs, CPS supports caregivers of its beneficiaries with economic empowerment through Internal Savings and Lending (ISAL), where communities are trained in the initiative and self-select into groups that go on to pool funds together to create an internal credit facility where members can borrow money for various income generating projects and return it with interest.
The objective being to grow the group’s financial capital through interest on loans, in addition to growing individual businesses.Barclays, equipped with resources for a chicken project, was linked to an ISAL groups from Gombo primary school, made up of caregivers whose children are on school fees support. The idea behind this being to give them additional support in light of current economic hardships to carry out a group income generating project that will assist in meeting education and other basic needs costs of children in their care.
Project handover
On this day the 12th of November, 2016, a handover ceremony took place at Child Protection Society Headquarters.In attendance were Barclays and CPS staff, Gombo ISAL group members and their children who are CPS program beneficiaries. The day comprised of opening remarks from the Director giving an appreciation of the background and relationship between CPS and Barclays Bank, followed by a program overview by the organization’s Programs Manager and lastly Barclays addressed the audience.
Material presented to the ISAL group included: 100 Chicks, 4 drinkers, 2 feeders, 1 starter (chicken feed), 3 growers (chicken feed), 3 finishers (chicken feed), 1 energy saving light, 3 bottles of pesticides.Above resources were believed to be enough to see the group through the first batch of broilers for 6 weeks until the first yield. Caregivers were requested to provide 6 of the total number of chickens to Barclays staff present on the day as a seed for market linkages.