Haika’s Story
For months, Haika attended a community savings group in Tanzania without her husband's knowledge. She saved what little money she could, determined to build a better future for her children.
What began as a courageous step toward financial independence would eventually become her family's lifeline during a devastating medical crisis.
Through a Plant With Purpose Purpose Group, Haika gained access to savings, loans, and a supportive community that helped her start businesses, provide for her children, and overcome financial hardship.
Her story reveals how community savings groups and women's economic empowerment can help families build lasting resilience against poverty. Plant With Purpose has spent more than 40 years proving that lasting change is possible and that it grows when people have the tools, opportunity, and agency to create it themselves.
One such person is Haika (36), a mom from the Msuu watershed in Tanzania. Haika has been a member of a Purpose Group for eight years.
“Before joining the group, I was just a housewife with no income of my own,” Haika says. “Every day I waited for my husband to leave and hoped he would come back with money for food or household needs. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he did not. If the children needed something for school, I had to ask him. As a mother, that was painful, because I wanted to help my children but I had no means of my own.”
A friend told Haika about the Purpose Group, and the idea immediately appealed to her. “I wanted to join as soon as I heard how it worked,” she recalls. “It sounded like a way to change my life.” But when she told her husband, he refused.
Yet Haika had already begun to imagine a different future. She started attending meetings secretly every Friday and saved whatever she could from the little household money she received.
When Haika decided to open a market stall, her husband gave her an ultimatum: stay at home or leave for business. Frightened but determined, she launched the business anyway.
“For a week, my husband and I barely spoke, but that did not stop me,” she says. “Every day I went to work, sold my goods, and returned home before evening. As time passed, he gradually got used to it and eventually accepted both my joining the group and my business.”
Haika later took out another loan to expand her business, and she worked relentlessly.
Then a major crisis struck. Her husband became seriously ill and started vomiting blood. He was taken from one health facility to another until he finally received treatment at a larger hospital. At the time, Haika was heavily pregnant and only a few weeks away from giving birth. The medical bills quickly consumed the family’s resources. Her husband’s motorcycle had to be sold to cover treatment costs, and even after he was discharged, he still needed regular care that required money every week.
It was during this period that Haika saw most clearly how God had sustained her. The small businesses she had built through Plant With Purpose became her family’s lifeline. The money covered hospital expenses and daily survival when the household had almost nothing left.
“That was one of the hardest seasons of my life,” Haika says. “I was pregnant, afraid, and watching my husband suffer, but God did not abandon me. I learned that God can provide even in the middle of suffering, and that when you live well with others, help can find you in your time of need.”
The experience changed how Haika sees relationships and community. She says her faith has taught her that hardship is not meant to be carried alone and that people must learn to live well with their neighbors. She explains, “My faith has taught me to live peacefully with others, to help where I can, and to remember that God often works through people around us.”
By the time her husband recovered, most of Haika’s business capital had been consumed by the medical crisis. But she did not give up. She continued buying shares and rebuilding step by step. She later took a loan from her Purpose Group to buy another motorcycle so that her husband could return to work and help stabilize the family. With the remaining money, she started another business selling cooking pots and household items.
Yet Haika is clear that the greatest transformation in her life has not only been material, but deeply personal.
“Today, if my child needs something for school, I can provide it myself,” she says. “I no longer have to wait helplessly or depend entirely on someone else’s decision. That is one of the biggest changes in my life.”
Haika is no longer a woman who sits at home waiting. She works, plans, invests, and makes decisions with confidence. She sees opportunities where before she saw only limitations. She can now contribute to her children’s education, respond to family needs, invest in business, buy land, and build a house.
“You cannot overcome poverty by staying shut inside and trying to struggle alone,” she says. “You need to connect with others, learn from them, save, and work hard. That is what changed my life.”
This is what becomes possible when people and communities can change their own lives. Poverty is reduced by 55%. Families are resilient to crisis. Community members can build the futures they desire.
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