Turning Fortunes for Ojara Robinson

 

When you reach Ojara Robinson’s homestead, you find a practical farmer in everything. He grows many different types of crops within his homestead, mainly fruits for his own consumption and the surplus is sold out in the market.

“Growing fruits crops is more important and economical to my family health when it comes to nutrition”, Ojara says, “allowing me to spend less on buying fruits from town for the large family”.

The story wasn’t like this three years ago. Ojara Robinson is married to three women with 17 biological children and 7 orphans under his custody. With such a large family to look after, life was becoming difficult and his family’s poverty was increasing.  Several of his children were forced to drop out of school as the little income he depended on from farming was not enough to support his whole family. School fees became an unaffordable luxury.

Changing of the tide

He started working with GADC in 2011 as a cotton buying agent. In addition, he also became a nursery school teacher. In 2014, Ojara became a Field Officer under GADC’s flagship TRAIL project.

In his new role, he worked tirelessly to train other farmers to ensure they would qualify for organic produce certification –and enabling them to gain a premium price for their produce through GADC’s organic programme.

“70% of my earnings come from direct interactions with GADC when I earn commissions from crop purchases using the prefinance am given and 30% from other farming activities”.  With the knowledge he had acquired during the training given to him by GADC, Ojara was exposed to the value of financial management and the benefits of savings. Robinsons decided to save his money in form of physical assets like livestock, building houses for his children and their mothers, and even by purchasing his own motorcycle.

Dream come true

Owning a motorcycle is linked with significant productivity gains for small business people in rural Uganda. GADC are working on several ‘asset-financing’ programmes to provide credit to farmers for the purchase of essential equipment such as spray pumps, tillage equipment, and motorbikes.

Under one such scheme, Ojara was one buying agent GADC linked with Post Bank to receive a motorcycle loan. “My dream that never died has always been owning a motorcycle when I see my friends riding and through the loan extended by Post Bank with support from GADC I was able to get one. I never had any money to pay but GADC stood as security and I got without paying any deposit and was able to complete the loan very fast through the commissions that I earned.”  Today he owns a motorbike debt free.

Ojara has been able to build three high-quality baked bricks houses for his three wives, he keeps a small herd of domestic animals and the family is living happily. Missing his children’s school fees deadlines is now a thing of the past.