The Beginning

Awaken Mozambique was established in 2008 following a research trip back in 2004, when Dr Carol Dalglish visited Beira.

Carol had volunteered to provide seminars and training for micro-finance recipients in an existing micro-finance project.  Carol also planned to interview the micro-entrepreneurs as part of a longitudinal study aimed at improving the delivery of this type of aid.

In 2006 Carol returned.  By then, the operator of the existing project had pulled out of Beira due to a lack of funding.

What the project had left behind was awareness that there are ways out of the poverty that was a legacy of Mozambique’s troubled history. 

Hopes had been raised, but for most, the hopes had not been fulfilled. Carol found however, that there had been real improvements in the businesses of the micro-entrepreneurs she had interviewed on her previous visit.  Carol met with members of the local community and agreed to try to find funding to restart this valuable project.

She returned to Australia and formed a committee of enthusiastic volunteers and established Awaken Mozambique Incorporated.  The organization was set to expand the work already begun.