Nakuru Town West MP Samwel Arama will on Friday issue cheques for Uwezo Fund to various groups at the NG-CDF Building Githima in Shabab Ward.
But do you know what Uwezo Fund means to the people?
Well, Uwezo Fund is a flagship programme for vision 2030 aimed at enabling women, youth and persons with disabilities access finances to promote businesses and enterprises at the constituency level, thereby enhancing economic growth towards the realization of the same and the Sustainable Development Goals No.1 (eradicate extreme poverty and hunger) and 3 (promote gender equality and empower women).
The Fund is highly devolved and adopted the concept of bottom-up approach with decision making done at the grass-root level.
The Fund is revolving in nature and its operations are based in the constituencies.
The Fund was established vide Legal Notice No. 21 of 21st February, 2014 – Public Finance Management (Uwezo Fund) Regulations, 2014 and was launched by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Kenya on 8th September 2013.
Since inception, the Fund has disbursed more than Kshs 7.2 billion and directly supported 1,124,221 beneficiaries of which 69% are Female and 31% Male through provision of affordable and accessible credit, capacity building on entrepreneurship skills, basics on book keeping and market linkages and networking.
Overall, the absorption rate in the constituencies averages at 107.5%, indicating very impressive uptake of the Fund, with over Kshs. 1.5B having been revolved.
In addition, the Fund has recorded a cumulative repayment of Kshs. 2.8 billion since its inception which translates to 40.6 % repayment rate.
Uwezo Fund is a Government empowerment Fund that was operationalized through The Public Finance Management (Uwezo Fund), Regulations in 2014.
The Fund was established to address the socio-economic empowerment of women, youth and persons with disabilities through expansion of access to finance to facilitate initiation and expansion of their enterprises.
Further, the Fund provides capacity enhancement towards building strong and sustainable enterprises across the constituencies.
Through this the Fund envisions an equitable social-economic transformation of youth, women and persons with disabilities.
The Objectives of the Fund are;
- To expand access to finances for the youth, women and persons with disabilities at the constituency level for businesses and enterprises development;
- To generate gainful self- employment for the youth and women; and
- To model an alternative framework in funding community driven development initiatives.