Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

Dear Friends,

Thanks for your invaluable support. Today is International Women’s Day and any donation to this project will have a 30% bonus up to $250. If you give 10 dollars, we will get 13! This campaign runs throughout the day.

Since last report, we have given out 15 second-level grants and 9 small loans, received more than 100 applications for the program and conducted social inquiries. We also did a video of the project! You can check it out here.

You will get details on the second part (application and social inquiries) in the next report. For now, we want to focus on the exchange session that took part in late January.

This was the structure:

• Officially announcing our plans for the year, how many women we are going to help (80 new, up to 47 “old”), what kind of programs would be available to them (1 grant a year and loans at their request, no health insurance again), what we were expecting from them. (keep doing business, keep your book up to date)
• Do some exercises on entrepreneurship: One on challenges of their business and solutions and another one on mapping out business opportunities.
• Refresher session on Sexual Reproductive Health
• Disbursement of grants and loans

I’m proud to say this was our first training/exchange sessions completely organized by our new volunteers, Sylvie and Emma, who have now been with us for almost a year and are retained as staff. I was happily relegated back to the role of cameraman.

Some highlights:

“-Sometimes you see money passing but you don’t feel it – When you have more you spend more too” Mabel

“-It’s hard to keep customers happy and have good profits, if I increase my profits they complaint about the size, if I increase the size I can’t charge more” Cecil

“The most important thing is to be stable, consistent. Sometimes you are like you want to go to the farm or just sleep, but you need to be stable, because you will win the clients of all of those who are not stable.” Lizette

“You need to hold your costumer, pet your costumer” Judith.

The session about Sexual Reproductive Health had a different tone (I was the only male so I went for a walk while this was happening), common doubts about pregnancy tests and contraceptives were discussed, as well as cases of non-consensual sex. Let’s leave this quotes anonymous.

“Sometimes he would come drunk and not even notify me that he wants to do something, he just starts.”

“See you need to educate your man, put limits. If he comes drunk to my house he sleeps in the couch. I don’t have sex with you when you drink”

“You should be very careful, don’t allow men to abuse you, we are the ones that feel more pain so let them hold on”

We did not have such kind of interventions before and is good to see how, with time, they are not only economically empowered but also build their self-esteem to stand up to men and to talk about it. That’s why long-term support is so important. That’s why your support is so important!

After the session we ate together and were called for a short disbursement meeting in the Chief’s Palace next day.

Why are we giving these grants:

These are women who have been managed to consistently stay in business for more than a year (1-3). Some have improved a lot in their monthly incomes while some others have been affected by different problems but maintained the business against all odds. We want to provide: 1) Stability (something they really lack) and regular incentives (something to keep pushing for). So we try to set up regular rounds of grants for past beneficiaries and we condition them to being able to keep the business afloat.

We don’t give more money to those who do better again, but we have started giving out loans. We gave the first 5 this same day so some girls went home with 110,000 francs, (more than 200$) 50 of a grant and 60 of a loan. Loans are expected to grow in size as they build a good backgroudn (60,120,180,240) While the grants provide stability and an incentive for all, the purpose of the loans is to help those who are really booming go further and take decisive steps to come out of poverty in the next 18 months. We raise funds for this loans in a separate project (this is the second round!). Since January others have been asking and we have given already 9 loans in total.

Thanks so Much! Without you we could not have done anything. Remember, it’s women’s day! 30% bonus! Give and share as much as you can! Also, if you miss the campaign, we are competing for a position in the Girl Fund and we need to have a great number of single donations from the first to the 15^th of March to make it among the first 4 projects out of 164!! This is the least competition we'll ever have, so today is the day to give! 

Links:

• Our website
• our facebook
• Our twitter

Dear Donors,

Happy New Year and thanks so much for the many contributions you did this December,

Last week we received an e-mail from GlobalGiving saying we have been selected for the Project of the Month Club! We have been selected because of your relentless support, which gives us legitimacy. Because of this great initiative, we just doubled our budget. Throughout 2018, we are going to help 127 women. 

We have started January catching-up with the girls and their businesses, and we plan to end it helping roughly 20 of the “old” girls (those who were first helped in 2016 or before). This February we will start a thorough identification process to try to answer a very important question: 

Is it time to expand?

This February we want to know every woman of Tole aged 18 to 35 and who is living under poverty. Depending on the number, we will decide if it’s time to find another community (we have 4 possible locations) to replicate our methodology, or if we still have too much work to do in Tole.

Some highlights from the girls:

Blanche finally got enough money to start her dream business, a fashion store. It was moving to see her capital grow every month of 2017 (December 2016, 170 $, March 2017, 230$, June, 405$, October 2017, 700$). She did not make more profit than other girls, she just managed to save an unusual amount of money every month.

Prenet has stablished as a trader in Douala, the biggest city of Cameroon. She buys from Tole farmers and travels a long distance to sell at better prices. She is really good at it, we have seen other girls making attempts at this and failing (read down), since prices in Douala fluctuate so much as the market changes very rapidly. Her profits are at top 1% levels, with more than 200 dollars per month.

That’s Elizabeth’s territory, you might remember her from our August Report. After she received a bigger grant this November she has not gone down from 200$ a month. She is still focused on her sandwich business but used her increased capital to buy more products in bulk and increase her profit.

Gladys, who had been selling banana, started a business with her husband. A motorbike spare-part shop with a capital of roughly 1000 dollars! She is still selling the banana to keep her independent income “Even if I wanted I could not drop it, farmers come to drop the bananas at my door every morning”.

Not everybody has good news.

Some, like Ernestine are struggling after a bad sale of a tomato she planted to sell in Douala but when she reached there the prices had dropped. We don’t have any doubt she will recover, she is a very strong multi-entrepreneur involved in many things. 

After an unwanted pregnancy and the sad death of her mother, Elekta’s situation went down again, luckily she managed to re-start the business as soon as the baby grew a bit. We teach family planning and we try to protect girls like Elekta from economic downfalls, but we can’t expect to control everything, we can only try to keep learning, don’t judge and respect the rules we have with the community. She has made good efforts and will surely be among the girls supported this month, she also has a healthy beautiful baby.

Thanks so much for being there. You have given us legitimacy when nobody else would, and now your support is reaping fruits. This 2018 we are going to help as many girls as we ever helped in the whole history of the program!

Thanks again!

Links:

• website
• our facebook
• our twitter