The Microenterprise Project started in 1994 and was funded by the EU and the ODA and the UK.

For the microenterprise money, people would come with a project business plan and ask for money. Approved projects were supported for three years. After that they were supposed to have developed sufficiently to be able to go to the bank for further finance.  If they expanded sufficiently quickly, they could come back to the project for further money.

There was a lady who started a dress making project and wanted the money to go to Jo’burg to buy materials and magazines. She distributed the magazines amongst the villages and asked people to ‘find a design’ which she would make up which meant that even people living in remote areas could have the latest fashions and materials.

Another lady paid her loan back within a year. Like others she made soap. Her boyfriend ran a church in Butha Buthe and told his people to go and wash and get clean, and had a soap stall in church.

Two men were trained in fibreglass production. At least one is still working in Fibreglass, his first big contract was repairing a bread van with fibreglass superstructures. They made all sorts of things even fibreglass gravestones!