Thirty-nine year old Julie Aris is thankful to the Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion (CEFI) for certifying her to be VFLI Training of Trainers Trainer.

Julie was among 20 trainees who undertook a two week Village Farmers Livelihood Improvement (VFLI) Training of Trainers Training (VFLI) training at the Kimininga Hotel in Mt. Hagen from May 13-27, 2024.

CEFI and Market for Village Farmers Project (MVF) Project signed a Memorandum of Agreement to deliver Financial Inclusion training for profiled farming households under the project.

The MVF Project is executed by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock and implemented by Fresh Produce Development Authority. The project is funded by the International Fund for Agriculture Development and the Government of Papua New Guinea.

The project aims at improving the livelihoods of village farming households in five target provinces of PNG (Western Highlands, Jiwaka, Simbu, Eastern Highlands, Morobe and East New Britain) by facilitating their transition from semi-subsistence agriculture to market-oriented production and framing as a business.

CEFI is responsible for training the 25,000 farming households and linking them to the financial institutions in order for them to open bank accounts and have access to loans to support the growth and expansion of their farming business.

The participants are being trained to deliver financial literacy training and taught skills on how to train a group of Farming Households on Family Visioning, Managing Household Income, Budgeting, Marketing of Farm Produce, Financial Records, Banking Services, Debt Management and Farming as a Business
Twenty Participants are also given the opportunity to practice session planning, customizing and delivery. To complete their training, the participants will be assessed on their competencies to deliver Group Based Learning for Adults.

For Julie, It was not an easy journey for the mother of two who had to overcome many obstacles and challenges to look after her family and achieve her goals to educate farmers like her the basic skills to save and budget.

In order to be able to be a trainer and educate other farmers Julie knew she had to start with her own household, her own family and work her way up.

It started 11 years ago when Julie seriously thought about teaching people about financial literacy and her first training came in 2013 when she attended and completed a financial literacy training conducted by CEFI.
“I didn’t have any idea about savings and budgeting but after attending the training run by CEFI, I had a fair idea and started going out to my communities and rolling out the training,” she said.

CEFI’s financial literacy training for trainers gave Julie the confidence she needed and not long she graduated from IBBM with a microfinance certificate and landed her a job with financial institution whom she worked with until 2016.

After leaving formal employment Julie never gave up, she enrolled for her first VFLI Training of Trainers Training and that set the platform for her capsicum farming business.

She attended three more VFLI refresher trainings the following years to improve and better her skills and knowledge on educating farming households in her community on savings and budgeting.

After completing her recent VFLI training in May, Julie started to see changes in her family’s financial habits especially the way they saved and managed their household budget.

“We did not have a proper budget to follow and we spent unwisely, but after attending the trainings I started to realize what we were doing wrong and started educating my husband and children.”

“I started to see the changes slowly and realized how the trainings that I attended were starting to have a big impact on myself and my family.”

“We were more disciplined in the way were spending our money and we made wise decisions to follow a budget so we knew how our money was spent. My husband and children accepted the changes I was doing for the family because they agreed it was for the betterment of our family.

Julie’s wise decision to educate her small family paid huge dividends as this trickled down to her capsicum farm business and she able to apply the same principle on her farm business and this financially benefitted her family.

The investment in her farm produced better quality and quantity of production as a result of her trainings.

“We introduced a savings culture in our family and I saw that at the end of the week we had extra money left for savings. I applied this same teachings when I was rolling out my trainings, and told my trainees how the knowledge I acquired helped improved my family and farming business financially.

Image Captions:  Julie receiving her certificate and Julie at her vegetable farm.