The road to becoming the owner
of the ‘Green House’ Pension
Here is
one of the stories of families economically empowered by the Organization for
Women in Self Employment as told by both Ms Tsion (the direct beneficiary) and
her husband Mr Tariku who are currently residing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
My name is Tsion Gebremeskel.
My husband was employed and so was the sole earner of income
for the household while I was a housewife up until we had our second child. We
were living in a single room my uncle gave us. As our children started getting
older, our hardship grew with their need and so I started working at a garment
tailoring shop for 70 birr ($4.1) per month although barely three months after
my employment, my husband was expelled from his work. Our family then entirely
depended on the $ 4.1 I obtained while my husband did all the household chores.
In the year 1992, the Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia) municipality
office of administration availed residential plot of land for people with low income.
However, since the number of applicants to get the land was numerous, it was
then decided to distribute the land on lottery basis. Fortunately, I got the
plot of land though I did not have enough money to start the construction of
the house immediately. Borrowing a small amount of money from my mother, I built
a single roomed house and started renting it while my family and I lived on the
same plot of land but in a shelter made of cane that wasn't even protecting us
from splash of rain.
I heard about WISE for the 1st time while working
at the shop and immediately became a member. I started saving and took the
business skill training offered at WISE that focus on enhancing our business
skills inspiring us to transform ourselves. After the training, I decided to
quit my job and taking a loan of 500 birr ($29.4) and adding the small amount
of money I got as compensation payment from my former employer, I started a
small shop constructed on the plot of land I won starting with preparing and
selling Enjera (local bread), culturally prepared pepper (Berbere) and peas
(Shuro) for local consumption. Nevertheless,
I was not profitable so I switched to selling gift artifacts. But just like the
first one, I quitted this business as well as there was no profit.
I then took a second loan from WISE to construct a five
bedrooms house on my plot to rent as pension. Initially, my husband and I took
turns to clean the rooms and took care of the business as we were not in a
position to hire help. Being new to the business, we were also a bit confused until
we gradually understood it all. As the business gradually picked up however, we
decided to rent a residential house somewhere else for ourselves so we can add
more rooms on the plot. Although we were able to finish the construction of
additional rooms, they remained vacant for quite some time as we didn't have
enough money to furnish them.
Subsequently, a neighbor who saw our difficulty volunteered
to lend us 11,000 birr ($647) which we used to furnish the rooms and hire
workers as we could no longer run the business alone.
This was a big change for someone who started from scratch.
We used to get four dollars to live by for a whole month and now have a capital
of 3 million birr ($ 176,470.6). If I were not registered at WISE that day, I wouldn't have been able to get that training and the loan that brought these changes
in my life and allowed me to witness a significant change in the life of my
family. We are now planning to construct a six storey building on the same plot
of land to expand our pension.
Mr Tariku
is Ms Tsion’s husband and he says:
I was employed for ten years before the family relied on the
four dollars my wife earned. As we were poor then, I took the part of cleaning
the house, washing cloth, cooking food and taking care of the children. I had
to pay this sacrifice as my wife needed to go to work. I am now happy that it
paid back!
Women in Self Employment (WISE) is one of the four partner institutes of the African Centers of Excellence (ACE) for Women's Leadership program run by the Institute of International Education (IIE) , Ethiopia Office.
For more on IIE , ACE or WISE please follow the links below.
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