How our savings groups, literacy program, and mental health program work together to strengthen and empower our Thrivers.
“Ajing Ajing- I became strengthened somehow!” Helen exclaimed during one of her counseling sessions. She was describing her feeling after joining the VSLA (Village Savings and Loan) group. She had just lost her husband and felt totally impotent, both financially and personally. Helen was a mother of twelve but had lost seven of those children. When her husband died she began to feel desperate. “My body…my whole body and head ache,” she said. How could she fend all by herself for those dependent on her, not only her children but also the two orphans left by her dead son? She had been forced to sell her only cow at a huge discount in order to survive. How could she keep her son in school with no money?
Joining the VSLA enabled her to borrow, thus to pay her son’s school fees. She was even able to save a little. She began to feel more capable and hopeful. Her son completed most of Secondary School and was now working as a casual laborer in the building profession.
But then something happened to her. She began worrying all the time and losing energy to function in her daily life. When she came into the counseling session she looked weak and sickly. How had she lost the feeling of strength she was just describing? “I’m falling apart,” she whispered. She came to counseling “to talk it out, so I can feel better.”
Her THRIVEGulu counselor explained to Helen that this is what happens when the frequency and severity of stress is too much for a person. The brain descends into major depression. It’s like a battery that has lost all charge. The person becomes unable to think for the future and unable to manufacture any motivation to engage in positive actions. With the support of both her counselor and her VSLA group, Helen is learning again how to hope and plan for the future.
“I love my book. I take it to bed with me every night!” Margaret positively glowed as she told us about her experience with THRIVEGulu’s literacy program. Margaret had been forced to drop out of school when she had no parents or other close family members to pay her school fees. She came to seek THRIVEGulu’s counseling services because of severe marital problems. “I don’t want a woman who is not educated,” her husband would say when he came home late at night. Her husband used her lack of education to as an excuse to disrespect her and treat her badly.
During the course of counseling Margaret decided she could get her education. She found out it is possible for her to re-enter school in Uganda after having to drop out. She also began to feel she had the capability to figure out how to survive on her own and to provide for her children without her husband being present. She joined the THRIVEGulu literacy program, learning how to read again so she could get to the level that she could re-enter the formal educational system.
“The literacy book is about US!” she exclaimed. “It has stories about us, about Acoli.” The literacy book has been designed so that adult learners can connect the material to their daily lives. It is meant to not only teach reading and writing, but also to foster dialogue on common problems our group members face, such as illness and domestic violence. This book has given Margaret the motivation to engage with her education again.
THRIVEGulu’s programs work in synergy to empower our clients. Their mental health is supported by the financial independence created by their access to savings and loans, and by the expanded horizons created by learning how to read and write. As the stories above illustrate, all of our programs work hand in hand to improve clients’ self-esteem and daily functionality. It is like having more gears in a moving vehicle. Three gears that work together to get the driver where he wants to go.
