How you can help
This is how it works
Through this site you can donate to support our work in rural Uganda. 100% of donation will be used to disburse microcredits to the poorest of the poor. After you donate, our team of ‘loan officers’ in Uganda will select an entrepreneur in the villages we work in, and disburse a microcredit. This entrepreneur then has one year to repay the microcredit, after which we recycle the donation as microcredits to yet more microentrepreneurs. This way your donation will continue to help more and more women over time. Through this website and through newsletters, we’ll keep you informed of the progress in Uganda.
We are a non-profit organization. 100% of your donation is disbursed as microcredits; all the costs of the organization in Uganda are covered by interest paid over the microcredits, to ensure long-term sustainability and to make sure that your entire donation is used the way you intended it.
On this website, you can see some examples of the many women entrepreneurs we have supported over the last 10+ years. For more details about SYPO and how we work, please read our ‘about‘ page.
Ready to support our organization? Any donation is welcome through our donation form! Just as when you sponsor an individual microcredit, we guarantee that 100% of your donation is used to support the women in Uganda.
Corporate sponsorship
If you and your company or you and your colleagues want to sponsor micro-entrepreneurs in Uganda, we have some great options. Sponsoring through SYPO can be incredibly fun – you see the impact of your donation directly, and can follow the growth of the entrepreneurs you sponsor over time. Please contact us for more details or see some example options below.
1. SPONSOR A VILLAGE
You can choose to sponsor all the microcredits in a single village. A typical village has 200 microcredits, which amounts to around $20,000. When your company sponsors a village, you and your colleages can follow repayments of the village on this website, we can send you photos, videos and interviews with women who benefited from the microcredits, and we will of course add your logo to this page, our facebook page and newsletter communication.
2. SPONSOR A ZONE
A ‘zone’ contains several villages and mobile repayment centers. Each of our team members in Uganda is responsible for a zone, works from a simple field office within the zone, and visits all the women in the zone regularly. It is the unit of growth of our organization in Uganda. All zones are remote and rural, and quite spread out. A typical zone is up to 600 microcredits, and requires around $65,000 to start (including recruitment of a team member, start of a field office, and disbursement of 600 microcredits. When your company sponsors a zone, we can ensure the field office is named after your organization. You can also follow repayments within the zone on this website and/or receive financial statements of the zone. We’ll send your videos, photos and interviews with women who received microcredits in the zone, and we’ll add your logo to our website, facebook page and newsletter communication.
3. SPONSOR WOMEN ENGAGED IN BUSINESSES SIMILAR TO YOURS
The women in this project invest their microcredits in a range of different businesses (see below). Some invest in a farm, others in stores, manufacturing, trade, etc. Your company can sponsor the microcredits that are relevant to your business. In the past we’ve had a Dutch chain of barber shops sponsor simple beauty salons that the women started in Uganda. For this option, you can sponsor any amount upward of a single microcredit! We can work with you to
4. SPONSOR FIVE GROUPS
Women in the project borrow in groups of five – each with their own business plan but responsible for each other’s repayments. You can sponsor five groups (or 25 microcredits) for $6,500. You can track their progress on this website, and we can send you some photos and an interview with the groups.
5. DONATE A PERCENTAGE OF YOUR REVENUE
Several corporate sponsors over the years have donated a percentage of revenues for certain projects to us. We currently have a Canadian handbag designer donating a percentage of revenue to SYPO through The Philo Project. Great handbags and a strong message: women supporting women!