Dear Pippa,

I am so glad reading your positive compliments shared in your comment above. Allow me to respond to your questions as brief as follows;

Social Cultural norms:
In Tanzania, on average two out of every five girls are married before reaching 18 years (Early Marriage). The 1971 Marriage Act allows for girls as young as 14 (with special permission) and always allows 15 years old girls to marry. Again, in Tanzania, girls who get pregnant while in a public (government) school are immediately expelled and prohibited from ever returning.
Over 55,000 female students have been forced out of mainland Tanzanian schools in the past decade, solely because they are pregnant, and not given a chance to continue with school after delivery. It is also worth mentioning the lack of comprehensive sexuality and reproductive health education to very same girls due to a notion that it is seem too maturely for girls to understand some of these things at this very age, not even menstrual hygiene education. Few young people receive adequate preparation for their sexual lives.
Gender bias reduces social economic opportunities for girls and young women. Deprivation and discriminatory cultural norms force many girls from poor families into early marriages, this leaves them potentially vulnerable to coercion, abuse and exploitation, unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. Girls’ opportunities are particularly limited in marginalized communities, where they face restricted mobility and access to education.
Girls in Tanzania experience different barriers to access skills, opportunities and employment opportunities. Such discrimination is manifested in property rights, a poor education level (for example illiteracy among women is 46% compared to 36% for men) particularly in management, business development and technology. Discrimination tends to be rooted in traditional social norms. Their age and gender place them at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Girls and women in poor households are expected to perform domestic, non-income-generating activities, instead of furthering individual education and opportunity and when young women do find employment they tend to earn less than their male colleagues. We have received support so far limited to moral support, and this indicates the need of raising community awareness.

Funding and project sustainability, Vision:
CHIPUA operates in four thematic specialties; Business Development Services, Micro-credit lending/Self Help Groups, Vocational Education and skills training, and career-long mentorship. The funding for this initiative solely depends from our organization’s resources by 90% which is earned through consultation services and business development facilitation, 10% from the beneficiaries as seed accumulation to support procuring their take home business service items, as per say, we are working to realize a possible sustainable resource mobilization initiative to support these initiatives in a long run and to be able to reach and impact over 4,000 young girls and women with their own sustainable ventures by 2018 through treeing process from middle class players supporting the lower class players in beauty parlour industry and other sectors, and thus we balance between community enterprises, social firm, credit co-operative and market linkage.

How we do it:
Small Business Development is a field of intervention that we use to strengthen individual small businesses as well as their inter-linkages in a local economy through a variety of approaches.
Building the capacity for girls/young mothers to transform the sector and drive change through empowered middle and small class players. The approach focuses on facilitating beneficiaries to attain relevant beauty salon training, business and entrepreneurship and employment services to the youth women; building capacity within the system itself and building on the incentives of the actors to sustain change by formalizing the small players.
We fully bridge the financial services gap to women and small entrepreneurs of whom mostly couldn’t access financial services from other established financial institution due to lack of various collateral, we capacitate them through a best way possible through career-long mentorship and supervision.
I hope have tried to address your questions, please do not hesitate reaching us back for more clarifications.
Thanks!

This it's a great idea, I like it

Dear Ahmed, I loved the idea, and let us have a discussion over it in details, you can reach me via my email address: mussa.mashishanga@gmail.com