TDB provides microfinance opportunities to alleviate poverty in Tonga

One such program is the annual Market Festival, known as Holiday Market Festival, which is on at the St Paul Anglican Church Hall, in Nuku’alofa.

Microfinance projects aim to help generate income for those who take up the opportunity.

The aim of the TDB is to empower the vulnerable in Tonga by providing microfinance opportunities which will help them with their daily needs.

This programme has been made possible through the funding of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), under the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction Grant Assistance Project.

The Holiday Market Festival will enable vendors, some of whom have travelled into the capital from the outer island, and the bank’s microfinance clients (ADB-JFPR Loan) to sell goods ranging from handicrafts to root crops.

Participants include women from Vava’u, Ha’apai and ‘Eua as well as from Hahake and the Hihifo Districts.

The Market Festival was opened by Tetsumi Murata, the Acting Ambassador of Japan.

In his welcoming speech, Hasiloni Fungavai , the TDB’s Acting Chief Executive Officer, said the funding scheme aims at achieving the goal of a social sector project, empowering women who are vulnerable.

This is targeting unemployed women in Tonga’s outer islands and rural areas to help them improve their standards of living through micro-credit opportunities and business skills training and so on.

“We have witnessed today the work of their hands and the way women have used this program as an opportunity to have a stable source of income for their families and improve standard of livings, to learn how to save and also learning basic business skills,” he said.

Murata in his keynote address said that vulnerability is a notion that can be defined as a feeling of insecurity, due to limitation of choices and opportunities.

“It is important to address poverty by promoting local entrepreneurs because firstly, it harnesses people’s capability to make informed choices and secondly, it is a prospect for Human Security. Seventy percent (70%) of this assistance was directed towards women’s entrepreneurship, which encourages handicraft development, cropping and retailing, because women are very important,” Murata said.

He explained that today marks significant steps for us to alleviate poverty by reducing issues of vulnerability in Tonga, in order to promote Human Security.

“The notion of Human Security is a re-focus of concepts of feeling secure to everyday life by re-aligning our priorities with simple tasks such as educating people, providing people with job opportunities, making communities safe through basic primary services and so forth,” he added.

This is a show of the TDB’s efforts to end poverty in Tonga, showing that the war against poverty is not just an economic issue but also a social battle.

The program is also supported by the Ministry of Finance and National Planning.

The Holiday Market Festival ends today.