Resilience and Renewal: Ya Gabtu Shattima's Journey

Ya Gabtu Shattima is 50 years old, with five children and three grandchildren in her care. Her business began with groundnut oil and groundnut cakes (kuli-kuli), and it thrived until insurgency struck and her husband lost his shop in the market. Suddenly she was carrying the family's financial burden alone, on meagre resources.

With dwindling capital, her grandchildren had to leave school. That is when ZOA, in partnership with Life Helpers Initiative, introduced the Group Savings and Loan Association (GSLA) as part of an intervention to strengthen livelihoods. Ya Gabtu joined a group, and after three savings cycles ZOA/LHI provided her with business tools: 16 plates of groundnuts, a pot, a frying pan and firewood.

With renewed vigour she restarted her business. Within five months her profits reached ₦5,000, and she diversified: she now sells a bag of rice each week, earning about ₦4,500 a week from it, and sells fresh tomatoes from the farm in the harvest season.

Life has become significantly easier. She can provide for her children and grandchildren and keep them in school, and the LHI team found her business thriving when they visited her busy sales point.

From Helpers Digest, October 2023. Read it as a flipbook.