Our Bank has approved projects such as the provision of seeds or young animals, sewing machines, carts, maybe with a donkey, cows, goats, or the provision of market stalls or street food stalls – micro-businesses that soon produce employment and uncomplicated cash returns. We avoid sponsoring any hi-tech or high maintenance items.
Mushroom farming costs around £100 to set up and is incredibly easy and profitable with a major demand for the product. See this page.
People all over Africa are desperate for animal traction as a means of cultivation or food production. The oxen can plough 2 big acres of market gardens in a week hence 8 gardens in the months of rainfall. The cost of two oxen, a plough, veterinary fees and full equipment costs an initial £330 and produces many times that amount over and over again for the owners or the community group.
In India the Bank supplies a milk cow to an orphanage or to a children’s home which is paid for monthly till the whole cost is covered. The cow provides milk in the morning which is sold to provide income for the children’s home, and is milked again in the afternoon to provide milk for the children and income to buy food and pay the insurance for the cow. A pregnant milk cow costs around £220.
Chickens are a very low-tech micro-business and are often cared for by children and the family in general, providing a non-stop supply of eggs and meat for meals and for sale. £200 will buy 50 chicks, feed, vaccinations and a good hen house.
Bee keeping and honey, tree planting and horticulture, home management, nutrition, HIV/AIDS training, fish farming, brick making, bakery, quails, disinfectant manufacture, tailoring courses, and skill training schools of many kinds have brought great delight to the owners, students and to the DCI Trust as well.
In late 2003 the DCI Trust provided an initial capital fund of 500,000 Ugandan shillings which is about £160 or $200 to a local community group working for the benefit of widows and orphans from previous insurgency and violence, as well as from the HIV-AIDS problem which has also taken many lives and left a whole generation without adult men to work and provide. Learn more about Aduku village.
View more photos of the Uganda projects.
Typical projects in Malawi
Typical Projects from Cameroon
$110 for the sale of food.
$110 for the sale of second hand clothes.
$ 80 for the sale of childrens wear
$120 to start a restaurant.
$100 for the sale of fruit.
$100 for the buying and selling of vegetables.
$100 for the buying and selling of firewood.
$100 for the buying and selling of cow meat.
$ 80 to sell dry fish.
$ 80 to sell foodstuff.
$100 for the sale of vegetables.
$115 to sell second hands clothes.
$120 to sell children clothes.
$110 dollar to sell beans.
$ 80 to sell clothes.
$130 to sell firewood.
$110 to sell baby clothes.
$150 to sell dry fish.
$100 to sell second hand clothes.