Restoring Hope and Dignity: Entrepreneurship for the Women’s Associations of Solidarity, Goma With the advent of the various peace negotiations and the timid beginning of the democratic process in DRC, the population of North Kivu are looking to start rebuilding their lives. Women constitute the majority of those living in poverty and faced severe challenges to meet basic needs. Because of this, many women are already engaged in small scale agro-commercial income generating activities to enable the survival of their households, but without significant consistency to generate a significant income. 
Cafod in DRC and Caritas Goma believe that to fight poverty effectively, micro finance must be available to the poorest of the poor, especially to women.  Caritas Goma therefore set up a programme in 2002, delivered by its Department of Development, to support female associations and co-operatives in Goma to establish responsible entrepreneurial businesses. Caritas Goma have so far found that women are very credible and more responsible, with a great capacity for financial management – they work for the good of their family, and tend to invest their savings for the improvement of the standard of living of their household. They’re skilled to manage a small capital. From experience in small trade between Rwanda and DR Congo border, this has contributed in a small way to peace and reconciliation as each population depends on the others production and willingness to exchange goods and commerce. In order to strengthen this programme, Caritas Goma presented this project to cafod, who was happy to support this initiative as a contribution to DRC CSP aims, and Just one world aim 2. Each woman will get a loan between 50-350 USD in a progressive increment due to each woman performance during 7 cycles of 28 months (each cycle will last 4 months). The loan is to fund a small-scale trade in Goma so that benefits from this activity will improve socio-economic conditions of women and their household.
The programme goal is To improve the socio-economic situation of 200 women and their households over 28 months, by supporting them to develop income generating activities:
Three main expected outcomes are:
1.	200 women from female co-operatives are trained by Caritas Goma in savings and loans management and understand how to save for their socio economic growth;
2.	200 women receive a loan and are engaged in small-scale trade in Goma and the surrounding area 
3.	200 women have saved money to run their business after the project or the business is self-sustaining.
The main activities will be focused one:
•	Training beneficiaries in saving and loan policy and benefits;
•	Allocating loan to women;
•	Collect savings of women and reimbursement; providing advice and support
•	Monitoring and evaluation
At the end of this 28 months programme, each woman will have refund the total capital of her loan to caritas Goma, and will have had saved at least 200 USD for her own business. There’s particular advantage as the interest rate is very low (2%) and Caritas Goma will be able to support its running cost for the next project thanks to interest generated by the initial capital invested. Beneficiaries are Poor, but economically active women are the target group for this project. To receive the loan they have to be active in a small way and able to demonstrate some skill in business. The project targets those who do not currently have the means needed to support themselves, who have limited capital or who are not eligible for other loans.