At Jersey Overseas Aid, our mission is to translate the generosity, skills and compassion of the people of Jersey into effective assistance for the world's most vulnerable people. Female empowerment is a focal factor across our thematic strategy, we prioritise interventions that are demonstrably sensitive to the inclusion of marginalised groups, including those which promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, girls and people with disabilities, with the aim of leaving no one behind. JOA's core themes are Dairy for Development, Financial Inclusion, and Conservation Livelihoods and across every one of these themes, women are both the group facing the steepest barriers and the group whose empowerment delivers the greatest returns. Across our six target countries; Ethiopia, Malawi, Nepal, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zambia, our funded programmes work to dismantle those barriers. Not by treating women as passive recipients of aid, but by building the conditions for women to lead, earn, save and shape their own futures.
One example that stands out is our partnership with Restless Development Zambia, a leading youth-led development agency that works alongside young people to drive change in their communities, helping women step into leadership roles and influence systems that once excluded them:
Project: Ulemelero - Live Well for Women’s Empowerment in Zambia
Lead partner: Restless Development International
Country: Zambia
The project has strengthened young rural women’s economic empowerment by building their financial knowledge, agency, and access to affordable financial services. Through community mobilisation, women in savings groups have increased confidence, leadership, and control over financial decisions while challenging harmful gender norms.
Using a market systems approach, the project has worked with financial service providers to deliver affordable credit and tailored social protection for financially excluded young women. So far, 12,500 women have joined savings groups and 2,500 community members have improved their understanding and use of financial services, creating a more supportive environment for women’s financial autonomy. The project has also expanded women’s access to digital enterprise tools that strengthen financial capability and accelerate their inclusion in formal financial systems.
At the core of the Ulemelero project are the facilitators who are young and mostly female volunteers who are trained to set up savings groups, connect their neighbours to financial services and model what it looks like to take ownership of your own economic future.
These are not outside experts, they are community members and are women who understand the barriers because they have faced them too.
"Before this project, women were afraid to talk in meetings. Now they lead savings groups." - Melny Mwape, Community Facilitator, Chifunabuli, Luapula Province.
Melny is a Community Facilitator with the Ulemelero 'Live Well' project in Zambia's Luapula Province. She has sat in a lot of meetings and watched women arrive unsure of themselves, eyes down, voices low and leave with something different. A bank account, a loan, a plan or a voice.
For generations, the formal financial system in rural Zambia has marginalised women. For women in remote communities, opening a bank account could mean travelling hours to the nearest branch, producing documentation they don't have, and navigating institutions that had little interest in serving them. Credit was out of reach and digital tools were a distant concept. Deeply held social norms meant that money and the decisions around it were rarely considered women's territory.
The result? Millions of women are denied access to the tools that could help them build security, start businesses, weather hardship, and invest in their children's futures.
"I now have more confidence to lead a group. I have even had a chance to know and interact with our traditional leaders, which never happened before."- Hellen Phiri, Facilitator, Chadiza District, Eastern Province.
At one community market day in Chadiza District, over 460 people gathered of whom the majority were young women, to meet financial providers face to face for the first time. By the end of the morning, 66 new bank accounts had been opened, and dozens of savings groups had signed up for new income generating opportunities.
Digital savings tools are now being used directly from mobile phones. Women who had never owned a device before are acquiring them through affordable repayment plans and not seeing them as a luxury, but as an investment.
"It is not about small capital, but wisdom and planning." - Kanta John, Facilitator, Mansa, Luapula Province.
A community credit fund, backed by a formal guarantee scheme, is making loans accessible to rural savings groups that banks previously considered too risky to touch. For the first time, women entrepreneurs in remote villages have access to the capital they need to grow.
Women's financial inclusion is not a technical issue. It is a matter of inclusion, equality, and power. When a woman controls her own finances, she gains a voice; in her household, in her community and in decisions that shape her life.
Jersey Overseas Aid is proud to fund the Ulemelero project, delivered by Restless Development Zambia. This International Women's Day, we celebrate these women in Zambia and across our programmes who are facilitators, savers, leaders and changemakers together with women across the world.
Restless Development will be presenting at our upcoming Youth Driving Change event, in conversation with UNICEF and Jersey Youth Assembly. Tickets are available through the Jersey Arts Centre and we encourage you to join us for what promises to be an inspiring and thought provoking evening.
