The word kleos is taken from ancient Greece and is the key to how Kleos operates. In ancient Greece, your children were born with your kleos and carried it forward like your legacy. Auma Evaline epitomizes this concept. She refuses to limit the potential of her daughters and is working with Kleos Uganda in realizing these goals. As she is able to improve her station in life, she is ensuring that her daughters will be able to as well.
Auma Evaline is a 32 year old mother of four girls under the age of 14. She lives with her children and husband in a hut at the outskirts of Gulu Town. Evaline owns a hair dressing salon near her home so she can have an eye on the children while her husband runs a hardware shop in town.
In Acholi culture, girls are not valued very much in the community and a woman who gave birth to only girls is considered useless. Some families have moved away from this mentality but unfortunately, Evaline’s husband still has this backward mindset. Her husband doesn’t care much about raising the girls, and especially about their education, simply due to the fact that they are girls.
She applied for a loan with Kleos Uganda because she wanted to improve her business and make some more money to help put her four girls through school. Her husband doesn’t help with school expenses, believing that girls are only good for marriage and nothing else. He values them in terms of dowery (bride price) aline which can be a source of income to the family when their daughter gets married.
Evaline is very passionate about her children’s education and she would do anything to see that her children succeed through education so that she can disprove her husband and everyone else in the family with the same mind set.
She is very happy for Kleos Uganda’s program because through the loans she has been able to increase her profits. She managed to buy more products for her work in the salon which has led to an increase in customers coming to the salon now! Her inability to afford more hair products had caused some customers to go to other salons previously. With the supplies she was able to purchase with her Kleos loan, her profits have increased to the point that she can maintain her supplies, while still putting profits away for her daughters’ education.
She wants to continue getting support from Kleos for the betterment of her business and her children’s futures. Evaline is afraid of having more children because she wants to focus on providing for the ones she already has thought her husband is pressuring her to give him male children.
Originally published at KLEOS Microfinance Group — Sustainable Development though Empowerment and Access.
