Change a Girl's Life Through Microentrepreneurship

Dear Donors,

These last months had brought some hard to face news, and we don’t want to hide them from you. Claudine, the star of our program, main picture in the globalgiving page, fell seriously sick, her legs were paralyzed, the saloon was closed for months and all her efforts and progress seemed to be washed down by the difficulties of life. Luckily a few weeks ago she could re-open again, in a new location; we will soon re-assess the situation.

This is the time where we will start collecting the loans back from the newest group of girls in Tole after a three months period of grace. We have charged this task upon them. Mercy, one of the beneficiaries, is relied to be collecting the money for us. We did not need to remind them, in fact we have been receiving calls from them (Mae, portrayed in the last report, called myself personally) asking us when were we coming to collect.

Our team also met with the Adult Literacy students in Buea Town and Bumaka, the classes are targeted for the Muslim community as it is normal among the Mbororo ethnicity that women remain illiterate. We had been asked to try and come out with a fundraise strategy for the program, as it has been running for a lot of time but due to donor withdrawal even the transport costs of the volunteers were in danger. It was then that the idea of joining both programs came together. Most of the girls that meet every Monday and Wednesday to learn how to write, read and even speak English would qualify for one of our grants. Actually the platform of weekly classes will allow us to keep better track on their business management and bookkeeping skills, their proven capacity for hard work and progress is also inspiring to work with. So the partnership between these two programs seemed only natural.

I want to close with another Mercy, this one from Bakweri Town,he started selling “pot” (that is selling little pieces of meat with spices on a cooking pot and going around the street selling them for 50CFA, 10 cent of dollar, a piece). She is one of our last beneficiaries and she is supporting her family on her own, paying for her sister's education and the needs of her child, only with the proceeds from the business. She has a keen eye for business, a good recipe and the determination to be walking all day, holding the pot on her head. She has been making consistent profit (around 3000 francs a day, 6 dollars, of profit, overall sales being 30, at 10 cents a piece!). Her next step will be a fridge that will protect her from the fluctuating prices of meat, improving her profits by around 2 dollars a day.

So this is the next step, giving her and a selected group of girls like her the tools for a big leap towards the end of poverty. We know that you will continue to be with them along the journey.

Thank you again, so many times we are being thanked by the girls and we know that it’s to you that they should be thankful. We explain then that it is not thanks to us, but to normal people like them with better opportunities and a great heart, that help came through.

We have to add also that today is Bonus Day and any donation to this project will be matched by Globalgiving by 30%, you have given so much, we can only ask you to consider sharing this information among friends and family, as we know you care about the project and the girls.

P.D: Reports for the microprojects related to this project have also been published, you can find them here:

Hairdressing with Becky and Itsa: http://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/build-two-hair-saloons-with-itsa-and-becky/

Tailoring with Aba: http://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/build-a-tailoring-business-with-aba/

It's 2015 already and we celebrate it with more news from the field and eternal gratitude for the almost 300 donations received over time.


As scheduled, we had a baking workshop and a business management workshop in early October, the disbursement of funds took place at the middle of the month for 21 new girls in two different locations . During both ceremonies we were privileged with the presence of Madam Justine, an experienced business owner and community leader in Tole (treasurer of Charity Sisters, one of our oldest groups of beneficiaries) her advice to the girls was invaluable. She talked about topics such as best business ventures to pursue, bookeeping, and the importance of cutting personal expenses, as she put it: "If you or your 'pikin' only have two dresses you clean one every day, but you don't touch the money from the business". She stayed long after the ceremony chatting and sharing her opinions with them.


How are the girls doing now? We have conducted follow-up meetings at random and the results are quite good, all interviewees reported more profit than in prior editions of the program, above the average of similar businesses according to our database. An interest fact when you consider that the individual funds disbursed were smaller than in prior editions (Because we want to disburse in two phases, an initial one to launch the business and a second one to give additional pushes to those proven worthy of it).The numbers? We can say, roughly, that Mae (Gateau Business) is having 10 dollars a week worth of profit, and Itoe (selling phone credit) 12, it might not look like much but it is: Considering cost of living in their communities, such revenues do improve substantially their quality of life. But more important, their capital was only 64 dollars, a figure they have already surpassed! Your money was well invested on them.

We saw Mae by chance just two days after the ceremony, as we were meeting someone else in Tole, and she surprised us with her diligence, she was already having a fully functional Gateau bussiness, and she brought some to try!

Itoe's case is also extraordinary, you must consider that phone credit has very low return on capital, to achieve the kind of revenue that she is managing, she must sell to an average of more than 240 people in one week! On an economically depressed community. We have advised her, and she had it in mind already, to complement the credit with other products with higher value added and we hope her revenues will increase even more in the future.


Not everything is perfect, the follow up showed that we still find it difficult for most girls to follow our advice on bookkeeping and we will work on how to improve the coaching sessions and materials, and make them more useful to their situation. We know that many of our donors are experienced in the field of development, and as always we will welcome any input on this or other issues of the program coming from you.


These past months we have also been using globalgiving microprojects, we use the tool to select and give extra assistance to those individuals that present extreme vulnerability or special potential for economic development (very often both). This is how we chose Aba(https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/build-a-tailoring-business-with-aba/) to support her future tailoring shop, and Itsa and Becky (https://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/build-two-hair-saloons-with-itsa-and-becky/), for hairdressing ventures.


These are excellent news, but we must ensure the sustainability of the main project, the one that allow us to identify such cases in the first place, and we are looking for additional sources of revenue to make the program stronger and more consistent over time, in order to keep changing more and more lives. Because of this Reach Out is both trying to expand and put in place economic ventures that employ the vulnerable and finance the program (such as REO’s piggery) and to find institutions that could act as additional benefactors for it. We are absolutely sure the investment is worth it.


We hope the start of the year was great for you and that you know that for many of the girls it was you who made it to be great.


Thank you.