From 25th to 28th of July 2022, training was conducted for 20 Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLAs) with 2 bookkeepers coming from each of these cooperatives from Mukarange and Rukara sectors in Kayonza district.
These women have received digitization training. They are very happy that they will no longer do their bookkeeping manually but rather do it digitally.
They have been trained on the usage of DreamSave application and have received smartphones for each (VSLAs). In Kayonza, Women for Women Rwanda reached a total of 60 VSLAs with 1,500 participants through DreamSave app training and are offered 60 smartphones (one phone each group). In the pipeline, 26 women digital champions will be given advanced training to allow them to provide technical support to trained bookkeepers in the future. Each digital champion will be given a smartphone to use in their daily work.
In concluding this training on 28th July 2022 in Mukarange, Kayonza district, Mr. Harerimana Jean Damascène the Vice Mayor of Kayonza district in charge of Social Development, joined to officially close a digitization training on dreamSave app to 20 women from 10 saving groups by Women for Women Rwanda. He also participated to hand over smartphones to bookkeepers of the groups, these smartphones will be used while doing bookkeeping for VSLA. This year a total of 60 saving groups have been digitized with a total number of 1,500 women with 120 bookkeepers.
Umubyeyi Grace, a member of the UBUMWE group from Bwiza cell, KARAMBARARA village was excited while explaining what she gained from the digitalization training and she pledges to use it in the future.
“This is a very trusted way of keeping information safe, just in one click we can have information about the group income on time, this is a user-friendly application, and most interesting it is in our local language (Kinyarwanda)” said Grace
Mr. Harerimana Jean Damascène, Vice Mayor of Kayonza District, thanked Women for Women Rwanda for supporting the district by training these women in VSLAs and said that saving groups play a huge role in the development of the district.
“The saving activities assist first the group members, especially their own development, when saving with purpose, members can easily pay for health insurance (Mituelle de santé) on time, and they can also participate in the Long-Term Saving Scheme (EJO HEZA. Saving will as well enable them to pay school fees and school requirements for their children, they will be able to renovate their houses without difficulties.”
Before the training, the VSLAs used to keep their records in books or registers, this used to result in misplacing, losing, or sometimes in the rainy season books used to be destroyed. And this was the cause of conflicts among group members, some used to claim wrong entries in numbers saying that the amount entered does not reflect the real amount of money saved. DreamSave app will help them to save safely and in the sharing process, everyone will receive the exact amount with no errors.
The smartphones distributed will help them not only in bookkeeping but also to access information and advertise their business through social media platforms, this will as well support the cashless economy.