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Loans with easy conditionsThe Tanzania Capital Boosting Association (TCBA) is a non governmental organization based in Arusha. It provides capital and training to small scale traders in the region and even takes time to assist HIV-AIDS victims to become self reliant.Javes Thomas Sauni is the Director of TCBA. He explains further on the activities of his organisation.By Matilda Kirenga QUESTION: Tell us briefly about your organization TCBA.
ANSWER: The organization was founded in 1999 with the mission of providing loans to local groups, giving training on small scale business management, help the groups to come up with project write ups and provide advise on economical issues. By the year 2002, we had already given loans to 45 members in Arusha all of which, added up to Tsh.5.5 million. We require easy and manageable conditions for loans provision, but the members are first given business management training. Q: How many people have benefited so far? A: We started with only 45 members in nine groups but now TCBA has a total of 206 members and 46 groups. We have already given out Tsh.34 million worth of loans to them. Q: Do you have specific geographical areas of operation? A: We cover three districts of Arusha region and these are: the Arusha municipality, where we have 193 members, Arumeru district with eight and Monduli (5). The Arusha municipality members have so far been given Tsh.31.8 million worth of loans, Arumeru district has got 1.75 million and members in Monduli district have been given Tsh.5 million, all adding up to Tsh.34 million. Q: We understand that you sometimes assist HIV-AIDS victims as well. A: Well, TCBA has been providing loan grants to 39 families which have in one way or another suffered under the HIV-AIDS epidemic. All these families reside within the Arusha municipality and our organization has already given them loans worth Tsh.3,675,000. These families have been investing the loan money into various small scale business ventures and apparently, they all seem to be doing very well in their projects. Q: Which means TCBA is actually recording some achievements? A: Exactly. In fact, we are also doing very well in empowering women who happen to be major beneficiaries of our services. Over 70 per cent of our loans have been provided to local women. TCBA has also managed to improve the lives of poor families. Our organization also takes pride in the fact that, through it, a number of local unemployed youths have managed to come up with their own self-employing projects. Besides, we are now highly known internationally, we have been getting volunteers from overseas like Belgium, France, and the United States of America, who have been coming to Arusha to assist TCBA members in both financial aid and expertise. Q: What are the problems that TCBA faces? A: We still do not have enough
sponsors to fund our mission in raising the life standards of local families in
Tanzania. So far TCBA works with individual donors, from outside such as the
United Kingdom, who have been assisting us.
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