IICD supported project: Small Initiative Fund (SIF) 1 - Zambia

Countries: Zambia [ZM]
Sectors: livelihoods

Summary

The Small Initiatives Fund (SIF) 1 project was set up in 2004 to finance small-scale, manageable projects in Zambia. It targets Livelihoods and Life Skills Training programmes that are being carried out by community-based organisations for disadvantaged members of the communities. Most focus on the marginalised groups of Youth and Women that are expected to sustain the households, often without having enjoyed any formal education or having any professional skills. The approach has paid off as one project has been scaled up as a broader, longer-term project

Introduction

The four initiatives part of this fund are:

• The Ndola Women and Youth Resource Centre, for example, facilitates a number of livelihood programmes which include brick making, pottery, sowing, tailoring, skills training and apprenticeship in carpentry, etc. The centre also sells its products to both local people and international tourists when possible, but is hampered in its efforts by limited market access and inability to display its wares to buyers, among other constraints. Read more >>.
• The women of Kalomo district, some 400 kilometres South of Lusaka are influencing and transforming the face of the district, socially and economically with the help of new technologies. These women under the Kalomo Bwacha Women’s ICT Club enable its group members (covering ca. 300 women in the area) to use the resource centre. They also facilitate various livelihoods activities, including tailoring, baking of occasional cakes, sowing, pottery, agricultural production and marketing, and psycho-social and HIV/AIDS counseling. Read more >> (PDF 334 kB).
• The Chawama Youth project is a community based project located in the Chawama Compound in Lusaka. It is run and managed by the youths for their fellow youths.  The project is one of the key successful Youth Employment Summit (YES) - Zambia Network projects with support from B.P. Zambia. The Chawama Youth Project is involved in a number of activities with a focus on youth Skills Training such as: Tailoring and designing, electrical engineering, carpentry, car maintenance and repair, electrical fittings and repairs. The project has been scaled up as a broader, longer-term project called CYPRO.
• Youth Employment Summit Country Network (YES): development of website so that content of projects could be published in one website. This project was stopped after formulation.

Objectives

• Support small, practical initiatives in Zambia in the area of ICT for development
• Supports learning by generating lessons learned based on the experiences within these initiatives

The development criteria for participants in SIF 1 were:

• Relevance to the IICD-priorities in Zambia (education, livelihoods)
• Project’s outcomes are tangible and support practical solution(s) for development challenges
• Initiative comes from local actors
• Clear need for project’s outputs for potential beneficiaries
• The project is related to or part of an existing initiative (not necessarily ICT)

Development Impacts

The activities of all these community-based organisations contribute directly, albeit on a small scale, to the Millennium Development Goals, most notably to goals relating to Poverty and Extreme Hunger, Gender Equality, and Combating HIV/AIDS (see www.developmentgoals.org).

The 400 beneficiaries from SIF 1 are benefiting from the project in the following way:

• Improved income-generation through informal education and employment; cost-savings on traveling to the town centre for simple information transactions
• Enhanced skills development provided to community members by the RCS, development of ICT skills within the community

Lessons learned

• Be very clear about expectations
• Central coordination is important because ad hoc problems always occur – training
• Creating awareness among community thru community leaders influences the success of a project
• Launch only when the equipment is working. Motivation for the community leaders and community
• We saw a shift in the focus on internal organisation to a focus on the community. ICTs is about communication and information internally and externally
• Start with simple solutions, which are adapted to capacity of people. After gaining experience scale up (more complex technology)
• IICD should not be not too pro-active. Basic steps are undertaken by organisation and they will inform us on capacity. That really influences to a great extend the ownership
• People want marketing of products. Because of delay of website it was rather difficult to attain the hidden objective

Budget

Euro 26,000.00

Project Owner : StepOut.