One of the most fundamental problems of poverty is that the poorest people in development countries do not have the possibility to save. Their income is so small, that their very survival requires them to consume anything they produce; they can never invest in their own growth and temporary problems such as diseases or draught can have dramatic consequences.

With some help, the poorest can climb out of the poverty trap. Microfinance institutions help by providing credit (as small as 100 euros). With this credit, the poor can start small companies, and multiply their income. This not only enables them to repay their debts with interest, but at the same time save part of their income and invest in their companies. The success of microfinance has changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

The short movie below was made in Uganda, and gives a short overview of this project and its aims.

SYPO started SYPO microdevelopment in 2009; providing the poorest farmers in the Mukono district in South-Uganda with small business loans. The loans are given following the model of group lending of the Grameen bank: five women form a group and make individual business plans. Without intimidating offices or fancy cars, our loan applications are low-threshold. The project's loan officers move into the villages to meet the clients and help them with simple business plans.

The maximum first loan is around 200 euros; the interest is 25% on annual basis. This interest covers the organisation's expense and high Ugandan inflation rate, so that the project will be able to sustain itself and grow over the years. Our loans are cheaper and easier to get than those of other banks in Uganda - by keeping a small management (all the project employees work in the field) and low overhead costs the project can grow to become an innovative rural bank within reach of the very poor.

We believe that the poor know exactly how to work their way out of poverty; they just need some capital to start with.

Below, you can monitor the progress of the project with live indicators, posted by our online administration system SYMBA.

Figure: The current amount in loans, and growth over time. One euro is around 2800 shillings, and the graph is in thousands of shillings. The maximum loan amount is 600,000 shillings. This graph is updated in realtime through our online administration system SYMBA.