The HOPE-girls is a newly released project that aims to help the street girls create a better future for themselves. The street girls are often from a very complex and difficult life situation, and we have been longing to find a way to help them. The initial plan was to build a house for the girls at the orphanage. This has turned out to be much more difficult than expected. First of all we are not allowed by Zimbabwean law to keep girls and boys together, and second of all most of the girls have their own babies. After we got to know the girls we also realised that building them a house would not really help them - just because of their very complex situations. The HOPE-girls was created to meet the girls where they are, and see the needs they see themselves. After working with the girls and their business plans for some time, we gave 5 of the girls the chance to start their own businesses. Because we think the risk of the girls not making it is quite big, we started low. They got a startloan of 50 USD each.

The first few days all the girls were busy working, but after a while several of them started relaxing and making up excuses for not working. After a while the truth came; they were broke.

Even though three of the girls did not succeed, two of the girls have shown an incredible achievements since they started, and they have been working day and night. In only 6 weeks these two girls managed to tripple their assets in their stores. They also managed to get themselves a place to stay, and are now paying their own rentals.

In 2020 we have 15 successful HOPE-girls, and they now have their kids in the MCHC-preschool. This is good for the kids, but also for the girls as they can focus more on their businesses.

Do you want to help one of these girls? Contact us at sponsor@hopeproject.no