Empowering women with disabilities living in extreme poverty to set up their own small business

FITIMA Guinée supports women with disabilities. From 2022-2024, it trained 110 women, enabling 50 to start businesses and create jobs through rights education, micro-management, and practical skills.

FITIMA Guinée is an NGO located in Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, which launched the Economic and Social Inclusion of Women with Disabilities project in 2022 to improve the lives of women with disabilities in extreme poverty. The programme provides training in rights, micro-management, practical skills, and the creation of their own businesses. In 2022, 50 women were trained, of whom 25 successfully started a business, which also created additional jobs. In 2024 the training was repeated for another 60 women.

Problems Targeted

Women with disabilities living in remote areas and/or in extreme poverty have almost no opportunities to get employment or start their own business.

Solution, Innovation and Impact

FITIMA, an NGO founded in 2003 in Burkina Faso and headquartered in Conakry, Guinea, was established to improve the lives of people with disabilities and women through innovative solutions and impactful programmes. To this end, FITIMA Guinée launched a project in 2022 called Inclusion économique et sociale des femmes en situation de handicap (Economic and social inclusion of women with disabilities). Most of the beneficiaries live in a neighbourhood called Cité de la Solidarité in Conakry, which was designed for 80 people but has over 700 residents. As a result, many women and their children sleep in the open, and begging is the only way to survive. The project empowered these women by teaching them about their rights, micro-management, and how to develop a business plan. It also taught them practical skills such as how to make charcoal from recyclable paper, how to process agricultural products such as chilli, and how to make drinks from fruit. Of the 50 women who attended in 2022, 25 were able to start their own business after receiving technical and financial support. After a year´s evaluation of the impact, the training was repeated in 2024 with a further 60 women.

Funding, Outlook and Transferability

The project is funded through various partners, including a $23,000 contribution from a Canadian programme and €82,000 from the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, with FITIMA providing additional support. By the end of 2024, FITIMA was planning and fundraising its next programme repetition with 50 women with disabilities in 2025 and more in 2026. (Zero Project Awardee 2025)

Pictures

Participating women receive training in rights, practical skills and business creation.

Participating women receive training in rights, practical skills and business creation.

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