Chronicle Editor
Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
SCORES of Victoria Falls women informal traders and schoolchildren have benefitted from the Reserve Bank of Spain’s financial literacy and capacity building programme.
The Spanish apex bank has sent a delegation of 50 professionals from various fields into Zimbabwe to assist locals on financial literacy, resilience and skills development as part of measures to mitigate the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Spain is one of Zimbabwe’s main tourism source countries and has expressed interest to help enhance livelihoods in the country’s prime destination city.
A team of professionals from banking and finance, business entrepreneurship, media, education and other skills have been in Victoria Falls recently, conducting seminars with a cross section of residents.
Mr Jose Luis Regot and his wife Maria, who operate Lola’s Restaurant, which was also affected by the global pandemic, facilitated the exchange visit in partnership with the Victoria Falls City Council.
Mr and Mrs Regot who are originally from Spain but have resided in Victoria Falls for 12 years, have been actively involved in humanitarian work giving food hampers in Victoria Falls since the start of the lockdown last year in March. The couple to date has distributed 80 tonnes of food through their “Helping Falls 2020” programme.
“These are friends from Spain, specifically from the Bank of Spain. They are here to promote the Helping Falls 2020 campaign to assist Victoria Falls people from this pandemic situation that caused low business.
“We brought 50 professionals from different areas of specialisation including banking and finance. They are doing small seminars and we had grouped people into groups of about 20 per session so we have had about 80 to 90 people here,” said Mr Regot on the sidelines of one of the seminars at Victoria Falls City council boardroom.
Other teams were conducting other seminars at various places across town. Mr Regot said the idea was to help vulnerable people affected by Covid-19.
During the Helping Falls 2020 campaign they got donations from France, Germany, Italy and Netherlands and Spain, which has complemented the efforts by sending expatriates to capacitate locals with knowledge to be able to restart their businesses and save during the low business period.
The training focused mainly on budgeting and saving. One of the trainers Ms Zoraida advised participants to consider the amount of interest charged when applying for a loan before making a decision on what type of lending service to use.
Informal traders were advised to form consortiums and groups. Chairperson of Hands Together Victoria Falls, an association of about 30 informal traders’ groups with between 45 and 55 members each, Mrs Simomo Sibanda, said women were the worst affected.
“People, mostly women, were affected as all businesses suffered abrupt closure. After the outbreak and as borders remained closed, we started doing small businesses to keep us going and we are grateful to this training as it has encouraged us to continue saving,” she said.
“We gained a lot and we will sell the idea to all our members and other women out there so that they get capacitated.”— @ncubeleon
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