* REPORT : 35

NAMIBIA REPORT

The homeless people in Namibia who are working together in groups to obtain houses, decided in 1992 to establish a national organisation, the Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG). The groups started to save, raise funds and build houses, mainly with loans from the Government's Build Together Programme, which were given to saving groups.

As the groups participating in NHAG activities increased, they decided to work also together on their own saving and loan scheme which would enable them to increase their incomes and solve their housing problems. Learning from their own saving experiences as well as those from NsukuZonke in South Africa and the Housing Co-operatives in Zimbabwe, members from all the NHAG groups got together and discussed how they would work on NHAG's own saving and loan scheme. The Saving Scheme was given its own name in October 1995 during the AGM of NHAG when the members decided to call it the Twahangana Scheme. Twahangana means united in Oshiwambo, one of the local Namibian languages. The groups started to save in the beginning of 1996. Twelve of the eighteen active groups started to save and now twenty-two groups are saving. About 450 members, of which the majority are women, have saved N$ 21,300.00. People started by saving only once a month, but then they learned that it is better to save more regularly. The groups learned to do their own books, and have regional workshops which take place in one of the groups in the region, with five or more members from the other groups. The members share ideas, save and give out loans in these workshops and learn from each other this way.

The Twahangana Workers are a team existing out of the members, who visit the groups to encourage them to save regularly, help them with the books and collect information on the progress of the members. The workers meet once every six weeks, to assess the progress among the groups and plan further activities.

A Twahangana Fund was established with N$ 75,000.00 which the scheme received from the Royal Norwegian Embassy for income generating and house loans. These funds were not enough to start building houses and the members decided to use the money first to increase their incomes, while they look for further funds. In April 1997 the first two groups in Oshakati in northern Namibia received loans from this fund, and in June 1997 the Leonardville group in the east received a loan. All the members of each group were present to approve that the applicants might receive loans. The groups also contribute some of their own savings for loans - twenty five percent of the loans are from the group's saving money. The people receiving income-generating loans are using these to improve their informal businesses in the settlements or to start a new business. Thirty-one members already received small loans from the Twahangana Fund and are paying these back. The German Government agreed to give money for the Twahangana Fund and the plan is to start building houses in the beginning of next year.

The people sometimes struggle to work together in Namibia. We are learning a lot from each other by visiting each other and we also learned with the exchanges to South Africa and Sri Lanka, that the saving schemes can help us to build our community which will help us in working together to solve our problems.

Planning houses, Swakopmund 1998/04/01

Plans into action, Swakopmund 1998/08/08