Cake Baking for Youth Empowerment in Uganda

Dear donors

We are sending in our report late due to one week interent shutdown in uganda that happened during the elections, we appologies. 

Cake baking empowerment program

The cake baking project made substantial progress towards the achievement of the strategic development objective as evidenced by the results so far, As of May 2020 a total of 50 participates were selected from 10 in Kabale, 05 in  Mbarara, 10 in Rukungiri, 10 in Ntugamo, 05 in Bushenyi, and 10 in Ibanda districts at generation suits in Mbarara district and were educated on promoting financial literacy, capability and cake baking skills, managing credit, saving tips, how to make a business plan, step to step guide to creating your own budget and sticking to it as shared in our midterm report in May 2020. So far beneficiaries have taken key steps in saving and growing their small-scale business.  

The 2020 Cake baking empowerment project has in total empowered and equipped 80 LGBTQ with financial literacy and cake baking skills and in 2017 and 2018 it equipped skills to the rural LGBTQ communities with over 149 LGBTQ people being empowered. Sa far we have trained 229 rural LGBTQ people.

We partnered with Amanya Amon a financial consultant working with equity bank in Mbarara branch to train and make awareness and ability for our beneficiaries to understand and effectively use various financial skills, including personal financial management, budgeting, and investing. On the 06^th July 2020, we travelled to Rukungiri district and gathered a total of 10 i.e. Two transgender women, 1 lesbian, 4 gay men, 2 transmen and 1 bisexual man at palm world hotel for a one full day interaction meeting about “know your finances” our coordinator in Rukungiri selected participants who are running small scale business and doing badly financially. During the meeting, participants followed and observed the Ministry of health guide lines inline to prevent COVID_19 from spreading and at the end of the meeting, participants had known their weakness in saving and promised to work upon them, MRF monitoring team will be visiting their business to track if there is progress.   

At the start of September, we gathered 30 participates selected from Mbarara, Rukungiri, Ntugamo, districts for a one full month internship baking program in their respected areas, the Mbarara participants have been carrying out their practical skills empowerment project at B$B bakery, the Rukungiri participants have been carrying out their trainings from Aunt’s bakery and the Ntugamo have been carrying out their trainings at penpal bakers.

The benefits of this project to the target group is that after finishing the trainings at the assigned bakery, the owners of the bakeries employees those who have been hardworking, In Mbarara, three trained are now receiving monthly salaries, Five in Ntugamo and in Rukungiri.

MRF innovated partnering with already existing bakeries to train their beneficiaries knowing at the end of the training, a few will be employed. The Rukungiri bakery owner is our own and gay, he is one of our first trainees in 2018.    

Best Regards