Donors Support People Facing Financial Hardship

Direct cash transfers funded by AMPATH donors are providing a financial lift to members of AMPATH’s community groups hit hardest by COVID-19.

Members of 99 community groups in Uasin Gishu, Busia and Bungoma counties are receiving emergency support in the form of direct cash transfers. The groups received an amount equal to Ksh 600 ($6 USD) for each member in seed funding. In all, 1,659 members will receive the financial support.

AMPATH’s GISHE (Group Integrated Savings and Health Empowerment) savings groups empower the most vulnerable by providing access to finances, enhanced financial skills and a community safety net group. 

The GISHE groups typically meet in person on a regular schedule, but the measures to curb the spread of COVID prevented them from meeting to carry out savings, borrowing and loan repayment activities for several months during the past year. At the same time, economic shocks due to the pandemic reduced group members’ personal incomes, as well as their access to livelihoods through the groups. The majority of group members are women, who are likely to be primary caregivers in health crisis which is an additional burden. Group members shifted their expenditure toward urgent household needs such as food.

Many GISHE group members missed savings or group loan repayments as a result of this hardship. For example, the Nangili Upendo support group has been meeting since 2011, but their savings were low during the pandemic. Previously, members used group funds to make purchases such as a dairy goat to provide income from the sale of milk and also farming inputs to become food secure. Farming and chicken rearing are popular income-generating activities among many GISHE groups.

When the groups were permitted to resume meeting by local administrators, they followed Ministry of Health guidelines including hand hygiene and mask use. Some held outdoor socially- distanced meetings with smaller groups, or less frequent and shorter meetings and others utilized mobile money to enable the groups to operate without physical meetings. Groups were also encouraged to adjust lending practices such as shortening lending cycles (to enable members to access loans for urgent food needs) in the face of uncertainty, revise loan terms and accelerate share-out timing.

The cash transfer program to GISHE groups was developed to help cushion the group members financially and will be recorded as an individual share for each member. This will enhance the individual’s ability to borrow from the group or support loan repayment, and eventually increase the amount they receive during share-out. The money will be available as a loan fund and individual members will borrow the money as a loan and will repay at an agreed interest rate.

Some groups, such as the Sinoko diabetes self-help group, form around a shared health condition. This group of 44 members are part of AMPATH’s BIGPIC (Bridging Income Generation through grouP Integrated Care) project which enables them to get health services and medication during their GISHE activity day as well. This model reduces the costs and time to travel to local clinics and enables members to build wealth to enhance health and vice versa.

Although data showed that most of AMPATH’s 2,400 GISHE groups were impacted by COVID-19, the groups receiving the cash transfers recorded low financial saving and loaning since the onset of Covid-19 in comparison to the prior year. The savings patterns of the groups who received cash transfers will be monitored for six months and compared to the patterns six months before the transfers to evaluate the impact of the program.