UWEZO FUND
Objectives of the uwezo fund are:
- To expand access to finance through grants and credit to promote youth and women businesses and enterprises at the local ( constituency level,) thereby enhancing economic growth towards the realization of the goals of Vision 2030;
- To generate gainful self-employment for Kenyan youth and women;
- To model an alternative framework in funding community driven development
- To provide accessible credit to women and youth
The Uwezo Fund which provides youth and women access to grants and interest-free loans, as well as mentorship opportunities. The Fund seeks to expand access to finances and promote women, youth and persons living with disability led enterprises at the constituency level. It also provides mentorship opportunities to enable the beneficiaries take advantage of the 30% government procurement preference through its Capacity Building Programme. Uwezo Fund, therefore, is an avenue for incubating enterprises, catalyzing innovation, promoting industry, creating employment, and growing the economy . The main feature is that Uwezo funds are disseminated through micro local financial institutions located at the local level for accesibilty.
The principles of Uwezo Fund are:
- Representation: to ensure the inclusion of all Kenyans including women, youth, persons with disabilities, elected parliamentary representatives and respective government officials.
- Accountability: to ensure government is held responsible to the citizenry for its decisions and actions.
- Accessibility: guaranteeing accessibility at the lowest level of engagement and for the largest category of recipients using a simple, structured and least cost approach.
- Economy: use of the best but least cost mechanism to achieve the desired objective.
Eligibility Criteria for qualification for Fund loan
(a) For a group
- Is registered with the department of social services, Cooperatives or the Registrar of Societies
- Has members aged between 18 and 35 years whereas thewomen’s groups shall be made up of women agedeighteen years and above
- Is based and operational at the constituency it seeks tomake an application for consideration
- Operates a table banking structure or any other group fundstructure where members make monthly contributionsaccording to the groups’ internal guidelines (evidence of monthly contributions shall be a requirement);
- Hold a bank account in the name of the group.
For an institution
- Is a registered entity
- Has listed youth and women groups within it
Among the results expected from implementation of the Uwezo fund are;
- Accessible Loans for women and youth
- Social Inclussion of the women and disabled in economic activities.
-improved livelihoods from effects of participation of women in development activities.
- enhnaced entreprenueral capacity and skills
- Sustainable businesess
- Value addition on cultural products and services businesses
The government of Kenya allocates funds from it national budget. The government allocates about kenya shillings 5 Billion annually an equivalent of about 50 million dollars that is allocated equitably to all grassroot levels (constituencies) and is disbursed through identified strategic financial insitutions.