THE BOARD CHAIR STATEMENT:
During the early part of this year the pandemic continued to weigh heavily on operations but, as the pandemic receded, rebuilding and recovery became our priorities. It is a huge testament to the hard work of our teams that during 2021 we mobilised 35,000 new members, a significant rebound from 2020. Those members went on to create 36,000 jobs, providing an income that will enable them to bounce back from the travails of the pandemic. Concurrently, our internal lending facility recovered well, reverting to an overall default rate of 1.5%.
In Kenya, as part of diversifying risk and ensuring financial sustainability, we continued to invest in resource mobilisation, achieving our first ever consultancy contract for the provision of training services to non-Hand in Hand entrepreneurs. We also secured a three-year extension to our successful EDRF programme, which will support our members with more sophisticated market linkage interventions to ensure business growth and ecological sustainability.
In Tanzania, under our new Country Manager Jane Sabuni, our programmatic footprint continued to grow. We started our first acceleration and regenerative agriculture programmes and launched an ambitious new strategy, which will enable us to scale up our services to reach 120,000 entrepreneurs by 2025.
Looking back at 2021, I am overwhelmed by the commitment of our teams who first absorbed the challenges brought by the pandemic and then began the fight back, creating businesses and jobs at pre-pandemic rates and winning contracts that will enable us to support thousands more through for years to come. None of this would have been possible without the steadfast support of our many supporters and funders, who stood behind us and our members throughout the most challenging of times and then provided us with the platform to recover. On behalf of everyone at Hand in Hand Eastern Africa – thank you.
