Microcredit unions have become part of the landscape of development projects since the Grameen Bank pioneered the use of micro-loans to provide credit to poor individuals without collateral in Bangladesh.

In Mozambique, ACT member the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund microfinance project has gone one step further. The organisation has set up financial institutions owned and operated by the very poor it wishes to support.

These institutions, called caixas, are providing women the opportunity to access capital for small business ventures as well as a safe place to keep their savings. Caixas have also become catalysts for the further education of board members and tools for empowerment as women, many for the first time, are able to access capital without the need for a male guarantor.

Number of union members balloons

In 1996, a group of women who were making and selling cassava cakes came together to look for increased economic security. They approached PWRDF for support and training to set up a formal savings and credit system.

With the small amount of money they had saved, they started a credit union, with each person buying a US$0.05 share to become members. These women were the first 47 members of Caixa das Mulheres de Nampula (Nampula Women’s Credit Union) which, 15 years later, has ballooned to 4500 members.

Today, 90 per cent of Caixa loans are used to set up new businesses or expand existing ones. In many cases, women have become investors in their husbands’ businesses because they are the ones who can access credit. This has earned them the respect of their partners and families and strengthened their capacity to participate in household decisions.

In a region where unemployment is high, many women have become job-creators. Women have created competitive enterprises in the food, mining and furniture-building industries: Teresa Albino runs a restaurant, Carina Abias Zacarias has two hairdressing salons and employs four people, Fatima Mutela is a bamboo trader, and Zena Adelino Assane is a furniture maker who employs six women.

Women rising through the ranks

Many union members are now recognised as reliable entrepreneurs and courted by local politicians and banks. Women also report they have been able to educate their children to university level through their savings accounts and business endeavours, a first in many families.

The testimonies provided by Caixa members, their spouses, employees and community members are the best indicators of results. One of the members of Caixa Nampula ran for municipal elections, explaining that her years of democratic participation at Caixa events had given her the knowledge, assertiveness and confidence to run for office.

Microfinance is not a silver bullet for eradicating poverty but it helps. It puts resources into the hands of women and allows them to make choices that have an immediate impact on the lives of their families, such as better health and education for their children.

Venezuela is submerged in waves of orchestrated violence aimed at destabilising the country. In a letter to the Churches in Venezuela the General Secretary of the Latin American Council of Churches, CLAI, a member of the ACT Alliance, expresses condemnation of the illegal and anti-democratic intentions of the opposition in Venezuela to bring about regime change using violence.

The letter is addressed to:

From the General Secretariat of the Latin American Council of Churches, we have sought to listen to the churches and you have confirmed that, in addition to the existence of greater social inclusion, there are serious problems of security, shortages and fiscal solvency that remain unresolved. Therefore the protests are legitimate in their call for greater security, against shortages and inflation, but the demand for a “regime change” does not match the democratic will of the majority of the Venezuelan people expressed in the last elections in 2013.

We thank you for sharing your views and commitment to peace with justice and we plead with God to continue giving you the Spirit of wisdom to accompany your people in these difficult moments. We are open to your suggestions for how CLAI can accompany you with concrete instruments of promotion and participation in the building of peace with justice.

Gunfire and shelling, in Juba, on 15 December 2013, signalled the beginning of a conflict that quickly spread to other parts of South Sudan, including Bor, Bentiu and Malakal.

The violence was sparked by a power struggle between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his ex-deputy, Riek Machar, and continued for months into early 2014, generating civilian displacement on a huge scale.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimated that 575,500 people were internally displaced and 112,200 civilians fled to neighbouring countries, prompting ACT to provide emergency assistance in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda (see information opposite).

It is thought that more than 450,000 people from South Sudan have sought refuge in those countries.

ACT response in South Sudan

Various ACT members and partners conducted assessments with other NGOs and UN agencies to map the most affected areas and assess the most urgent needs throughout South Sudan.

ACT responded with food, temporary shelters, blankets, mosquito nets and other non-food items such as medicines. The emergency response prioritised the most vulnerable, including female-headed households, pregnant and poor women, children (particularly girls between 6 and 17 years old) and disabled people. Child protection was a key focus in several areas.

ACT also assisted in improving the water supply for refugee camps and provided latrines. Most of those internally displaced had experienced serious trauma, so ACT offered both one-to-one and group psychosocial work.

ACT response in Kenya

The emergency response in Kenya focused on the Kakuma refugee camp in Turkana County, providing new arrivals with shelter, water, protection and psychosocial support.

At a transit centre set up in Nadapal, just north of the Turkana district, ACT members assisted in providing new arrivals with accommodation, hot meals, water, sanitation and hygiene facilities and basic non-food items, such as sleeping mats and soap as they waited to be moved on to the Kakuma refugee camp.

ACT response in Ethiopia

Ethiopia witnessed the biggest surge in refugee arrivals, making it the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa with a combined total of 635,950 refugees, according to UNHCR.

By October 2014, more than 190,000 refugees from South Sudan had arrived in the country. ACT’s reponse, run by three members, was targeted at Leitchuor refugee camp (with nearly 50,000 being accommodated there), Lule refugee camp, Tierkidi refugee camp and a number of other woredas (districts).

The priority needs were water and sanitation, livelihoods, psychosocial support, education and vocational training. Leitchuor, with little capacity in terms of water, shelter and other basic services, was declared unsuitable to continue housing refugees because of flooding, in August 2014, which caused extensive damage to infrastructure. The poor sanitary conditions posed a major risk to public health.

ACT members were working in the camp until it closed in September, when refugees were relocated to higher ground.

ACT response in Uganda

More than 123,000 refugees from South Sudan arrived in Uganda in 2014. In response, ACT worked in the clustered settlement sites around Adjumani in northern Uganda to provide improved water, sanitation and hygiene access for 22,500 refugees.

Support was also given to 42,000 refugees and 4,000 host community members to help build relationships and provide protection and psychosocial support.

Food, fishing and a miracle plant – with these, ACT in Haiti is helping survivors of two hurricanes and a tropical storm get back on their economic feet. In the space of two years, tropical storm Tomas and hurricanes Isaac and Sandy crossed Haiti, a country still in the early stages of recovery from the devastating 2010 earthquake.

The storms left large tracts of damaged property and agricultural land. With 54 lives lost, the death toll from Sandy was the greatest of the three disasters, and it damaged or destroyed nearly 28,000 houses.

The work of a local ACT member with the community in Balan, 18km east of the capital, has been to reduce soil erosion and protect residents against the next violent storms. Work has also focused on agriculture and fish-farming programmes aimed at long-term development, restoring families’ purchasing power.

To improve agricultural techniques, our member has set up a field school teaching technical skills at demonstration plots, which students replicate on their own land.

Another programme reduces the need for women to fell trees to produce charcoal to sell. Instead, female heads of households receive seeds for growing a market garden – eggplant, tomato, pepper, onion, cabbage and other local vegetables – and agricultural tools such as pickaxes, hoes and machetes.

The fruits and vegetables improve the health of families, and excess produce can be sold for cash. Our member fosters links between government departments, local authorities and communities, encouraging them all to work on environmental problems and so lessen the effect of natural disasters.

To this end, they have helped to cultivate 72,000 papaya, cherry and citrus seedlings, which now flourish on beneficiaries’ land. Fish-farming and technical skills have been introduced by our local member to help combat the chronic malnutrition that affects nearly a quarter of children in Balan.

And to improve nutrition even further, thousands of Moringa oleifera seedlings have been planted. This highly valued plant has an impressive range of medicinal uses and is highly nutritious.

Through its achievements, ACT in Haiti has been able to stimulate the local economy by strengthening the livelihoods of more than 3,000 families from Balan, and has contributed to the rehabilitation of the environment.

More than 11,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Armenia. Most are ethnic Armenians whose families originally fled the 1915-16 Armenian genocide in which more than 1 million Armenians were killed.

One-third of the existing Armenian population already live in poverty and 18 per cent are unemployed. It is a situation that does not bode well for the refugees – almost none are able to find employment and consequently they quickly use up the resources they bring.

ACT response

Following a very successful Rapid Response Fund programme in 2012, an appeal in 2013 raised US$96,096 and was disbursed to an ACT member. The goal of the response was to assist 942 Syrian refugee families in Armenia.

Most of the refugees arrived with little and hoped to return home soon. However, as the conflict has intensified and prolonged, this has not been possible and they have been forced to rely on assistance.

With many refugees living with extended family in the capital Yerevan, in often cramped, overcrowded conditions, the situation is challenging for their hosts too. Our member used a reliable direct transfer system to get food and basic essentials to the refugees through the use of plastic charge cards from a supermarket chain.

The cards can be used by cardholders to buy the items they most need, but do not allow the purchase of alcohol and cigarettes.

The 2007 general elections in Kenya erupted in ethnic violence.

To prevent a repeat in 2013, the ACT Kenya Forum, made up of 13 members, carried out a campaign for peace.

The campaign was planned as a partnership between youth and faith communities. Focusing on the areas of violence from 2007, the campaign reached 15,000 people.

Events, media coverage and a travelling peace caravan encouraged people not only to register as voters but to choose candidates with a vision of development rather than to vote on ethnic lines.

By focusing on issues, the campaign deliberately challenged ethnically polarised narratives of politics and encouraged greater participation of women, both as candidates and voters.

“The campaign encouraged an examination of how young people had been drawn into violence in the past and what the consequences of that approach were,” said Benson Ireri, from the advocacy working group of the ACT Kenya Forum. “People were encouraged to sign a peace charter and become peace ambassadors, and this was signed by religious and political leaders too.”

In 2012, the European Union announced that future agreements with Israel must exclude settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).

In 2013, it issued guidelines to exclude settlements’ participation in EU programmes.

These steps were welcomed by several ACT members, who have long advocated for the EU not to participate in Israel’s violations of international law (through Israel’s construction and maintenance of settlements in the oPt).

Israeli settlements take up Palestinian land and water resources and restrict movement: impeding Palestinian access to education, healthcare and employment, as well as restricting the economy – all contributing to poverty.

Shortly before the EU’s decision, a report called Trading Away Peace, signed by a coalition including ACT members, argued that in its trade relations in particular, the EU was undermining its own position on the illegality of settlements.

It revealed that the EU imported about 15 times more from the illegal settlements than from the Palestinians themselves. Advocacy efforts by some ACT members on settlements have focused on EU institutions and governments, and included partnerships with networks of NGOs such as APRODEV.

They continue to advocate for the EU and European governments to move from words to action – asking, among other things, for measures to ensure the correct labelling of settlement products and, further, a ban of imports of settlement products.