Patapia

PataPia supports local refugee women in Kampala start and improve their own small businesses for self-sustainability. With no relevant skills for employment, women refugees opt to start and run their own small businesses. With the current COVID-19 crisis, many don’t even have the resources to start or resume their businesses and with no major assets, can't get bank loans. PataPia is revolutionising Village Savings and Loan Associations by providing a revolving fund that will support refugee women in Kampala with seed financing and expert mentoring to start and improve their businesses. With a mobile software for cloud based banking, the women can check their status, save and payback from their phones and allows us to automate all financial financial. 

Women led refugee households struggle everyday to feed their families. Uganda is one of the biggest refugee host countries the world over with refuges from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and Ethiopia. Often, when the refugees come, they are required to stay in the camps where they get some support from UNHCR. The support is so minimal and leaves many more frustrated, traumatised and financially challenged. As a result, some move to the capital, Kampala with hopes of better opportunities. According to the Humanitarian Platform for Local and National organisations in Uganda; The Plight of Female Urban Refugees in Uganda, refugee women in Kampala face social and economic exclusion. With no access to major assets, many can’t get loans because of having no collateral. Therefore, with no startup financing, even the dream of having a better life compared to the camp becomes far-fetched. In addition, many don’t have the basic skills for starting and running a business and/or a saving culture thus many run businesses without plans for growth.

Now with Covid-19 lock down, many of the small businesses suffered the most. 

PataPia equips refugee women in Kampala with the skills and resources to start and successfully run their own SMEs. We provide business financing and a savings scheme through a software that allows the women to check their status, pay and save from their phones anytime, from anywhere. Our requirements are simple, a letter of recommendation from UNHCR and refugee ID. Each woman then goes through a one-month mini MBA and mentoring that will support each woman with the skills to start and grow their business and nurture a saving culture.

Mini MBA overview

The mini MBA covers market analysis, customer understanding, marketing and sales, financial management and saving. The program is conducted in local languages for better understanding by the women, as many don’t know English. The program is composed of group facilitation and individual mentoring.

Uganda has over 1.4 million refugees, 87% constitute women and children (Uganda Humanitarian Report Situation, UNICEF). Unfortunately, Uganda is receiving more refugees from the unrest in neighbouring countries. Most of these are in women and children and many of the households are led by women who struggle to live day to day against the inequalities against women and refugees. UNHCR provides food to refugees in the camps (3kgs of beans and 9kgs of maize for a month) and nothing to those in the Kampala. The food distributed by UNHCR is too little to sustain most families and leaves many frustrated.

Engaging with the women through surveys gave us the understanding that small businesses is a way out of poverty for their households. Their biggest need is how to make their own money without depending on donations. In as much as many have ideas of businesses to do, they lack the finances to start. This greatly informed our solution.

We realised that if we give refugee women small low interest loans and a training on how to start their own businesses, then the women can start and run their own businesses thereby creating income and better livelihoods for their families. 

According to the latest human development report by UN, women and girls are systematically excluded by economic, political, social and cultural barriers. “Women tend to be poorer, earn less, and have fewer opportunities in most aspects of life than men,” according to the report.

And now as refugees it's worse. Having left everything behind, your home and its comfort not knowing if the people at the end of your journey will welcome you. Some of these women have lost their husbands to the wars and insecurity they are running from and are left with many children to take care of.

We are revolutionising Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) through mobile software linked to mobile money that allows women refugees to save, get startup financing. VSLA model creates self-managed and self-capitalised savings groups that use members' savings to lend to each other and usually contain 10-25 members. We are scaling this model to reach thousands of women on the same platform. By adding a software component to VSLA systems, more women can save and access loans while accumulating a bigger pool that will be used to support more women refugees join the network. Secondly, the software allows the women to transact anytime, anywhere while allowing us to easily manage transactions and our reporting.

Our model is based on a partnership with Ensibuuko, a Fintech company in Uganda. Ensibuuko provides us with Mobis, a cloud-based Microfinance management platform designed for paperless transactions and bring efficiency in digitising the management of customer data and transactions. It contains SMS integration that allows the women to withdraw, save, get mini statements and borrow loans and reconcile mobile money deposits and withdraws.

Through the software, the women can submit requests for loans and after the vetting process, get a notification of the request outcome and withdraw the money.

https://www.care.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CARE-VSLA-Report-Uganda-Eco-Devel.pdf

We believe that if refugee women can have easy access to small loans and the knowledge on how to start and run their own SMEs, then they can generate revenues that will help them improve their household livelihoods and save the surplus while the savings and loan repayments will support more refugee women start their own businesses.

PataPia just started and has 30 women who are undergoing our mini MBA to start and grow their own businesses. Based on our current capacity, 10 women will be selected to get each a loan of $300 for starting their own business

Within the next year, we aim to have at least 100 refugee women supported to start their own businesses. We also aim to have 200+ people (both female and male refugees in Kampala) saving with us.

In five years, we aim to have established in Nakivaale, Kyaka and Bidibidi refugee camps. In each camp, we aim to have at least 200 women businesses started in each camp and 

Our growth is dependent on having a big number of women in the network and the ability to get the appropriate financing the women need to start their businesses. Our starting pool is small and can only provide support to 10 women with each getting about $150. Access to more financing will support us include more women and get them the financing they need to start their own businesses.

We are currently conducting a crowdfunding campaign to support raise funds to sufficiently support the initial group of women. We are also seeking for individuals and organizations that will give grants or donations that will help us set up.

On going, we shall also seek for impact investors that will help us grow our impact.

Full time staff 5

Part time staff 3

PataPias' team is founded by a refugee lady, Rebecca Aime who in her quest to support her siblings started and run over 10 different types of small businesses. She later underwent training social entrepreneurship and business startup.

Other founding members are: 

Geoffrey Omoding is a Ugandan national with over 7 years experience designing training and support starting entrepreneurs. He has been a mentor, trainer and consultant at Social Innovation Academy, an informal school in Uganda supporting marginalised youth start their own businesses. With a background in sciences, Geoffrey is also adept in technology.

Gevais K. Basime is a refugee from Congo resettled in Denmark. Since being resettled in 2015, Gevais has supported raise funds to support refugees in Uganda.

PataPia currently has two core partners for the initial piloting

• Ensibuuko, a Fintech software company in Uganda providing the software for managing the financial transactions
• UNHCR, as part of the legal requirements for getting loans. UNHCR is responsible for resettling refugees and so we are making sure no one will be resettled without completing their loan.

PataPia provides refugee women with financial and intellectual ability to start a business. With only a letter of recommendation from UNHCR, a refugee woman can get a loan today and repay from the comfort of your phone.

Our approach supports refugee women break the economic inequalities surrounding them and build the capacities of the poor who are largely ignored by commercial banks and other lending institutions.

We are raising initial investment that will form a pool from which women businesses will be invested. Each woman business then pays 2% monthly interest on a reducing basis for a year. Additionally, each business financed through us is required to save with us at least $5 monthly which attracts an annual interest of 10%. This savings and the repaid loans are invested in more women businesses which will in turn attract more revenues that will be invested in more women businesses.

The savings model is also open to people outside the women businesses to save. These are charged a small monthly transaction fees.

The prize funding will support us get a pool that the women can borrow from and greatly get our impact bigger as more women will be trained and financed to start their own businesses.

Secondly, the mentoring and access to the networks will provide us a network that could be great in establishing partnerships to develop our model. we also want to design strategies to the risks that we might incur especially in terms of loan systems.

We shall need support in getting a larger pool from which the women will borrow, pay back and more women to borrow from.

We also seek to develop our own software so as to have direct control of what we do. In addition, we need support to create measurement indicators and design more visibility and awareness about what we do. 

Organizations and Solve members working with refugees as we intend to scale outside Uganda.

MIT faculty in the department of Software and Business Apps

Our work directly supports refugee women, one of the most marginalized and economically secluded groups. Being considered for the Andan Prize for Innovation will support us get more resources to invest in the women and create a ripple effect.

Patapia is empowering refugee women to start and run their own businesses. Our approach includes supporting them learn and use technology in their daily activities. We provide a software from which the women will pay, check and save from their phones.