How a Kano Housewife Turned Weekly Savings into a Thriving Okrika Business Through VSLA Support

Empowering women is essential to the health and social development of families, communities, and countries. When women are living safe, fulfilled, and productive lives, they can reach their full potential. Contributing their skills to the workforce can raise happier and healthier children.

Hajiya Rashida Haruna a forty-seven-year-old woman who hails from Rijiyar Lemo community, is a mother of six children and a member of Umma Alkhari VSLA group at Rijiyar Lemo community.

She has always been a full-time housewife, depending on her husband for all of her needs. During one of the monitoring visits to her household, she was counseled on Financial Education and was encouraged to start a business to support her husband in taking care of their children. She discussed with her husband her intention to start a business of selling pre-loved clothing (okrika) inside her house. The husband consented to it, but there was not enough money to start the business. She was introduced to Umma Alkhari VSLA, where she was able to save 500 Naira every week from the money her husband gives her daily.

After four months of consistence savings, she was given a loan of 15,000 Naira to be paid back within three months after collection of the loan. Haijya Rashida said that my supportive husband also gave me an additional money of 10,000 Naira. She travelled to Daura to buy a bale of pre-loved clothes for 20,000 Naira, as it is much cheaper over there than in Kano State. She said I started the business with just one bail, and I sold everything within a month. I ordered another one, and I also added the sale of slippers to the business. My customers often come to my house to buy and resell, and sometimes I take the clothes from house to house within the community to sell. She said the business is profitable, she has made more than double of her investment, she was able to repay her loan within two months, and she still has enough money to save. Rashida said;

” I’m so grateful for these interventions in my household. I have relieved my husband of a heavy burden as I am not the only wife, and my husband also has other children.”

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them, I no longer wait for my husband before I can feed myself and my children said Rashida with a smile on her face. All my children are enrolled in both government primary and secondary schools in our community”.