rnThis article is the first in a four-part series entitled “Micro-credit and Women: Purpose, Passion and Power”
rnThe driving vision behind the Global Action Network of Entrepreneurial Women is the support, assistance and wisdom we women entrepreneurs can provide each other by coming together from around the world — as women — and joining forces for the betterment of all of us.rnWith this philosophy, I created ga’NEW’s Four Signature Programs.
The first of these is the ga’NEW Micro-credit Program.
Over the past year and a half, my passion and understanding of micro-credit as a powerful tool in building self-sufficiency among the world’s poor have grown dramatically. As a result of all I’ve learned about the workings of micro-credit, I have built ga’NEW with a strong foundation of women helping women: specifically, ga’NEW Star Members — who are global action women entrepreneurs — helping aspiring sister entrepreneurs now living in poverty to gain their own economic empowerment through our ga’NEW Micro-credit Program.
Micro-credit: Definition
I have often been asked, what, exactly, is micro-credit? The definition is simple, though the execution often is not.
Micro-credit is the extension of small loans to individuals who, because they are poor, do not have access to traditional banking services. These borrowers are regarded as “unbankable,” generally because they are unable to provide either collateral or a steady employment history to secure their loans. Thus their small loans are extended collateral-free and generally (though not always) at interest rates far lower than those offered by the money-lenders who were previously the only option for securing funds.
Micro-credit loans are typically used to begin or build a small enterprise for the purpose of advancing to a higher economic level — and, of course, to generate income enabling the borrower to repay her loan. For those at the bottom of this financial pyramid, the initial objective is to move beyond the extreme poverty level of 1.25 USD a day.
Micro-credit and Women
Can you imagine the moment-to-moment reality of struggling to scratch out an existence for yourself and your children on 1.25 USD a day? 8.75 USD a week? 35 USD a month? I can’t. To be honest, just the imagining is crushing to me.
But 84 million of the world’s women do exactly that. And they do it every single day. For a lifetime.
rnMicro-credit offers an option — and hope, especially for those whose creativity and initiative are begging to be set free and utilized.
Micro-credit has had an impressive success rate of both repayment of initial loans and advancement to increasingly greater loans, particularly among women. Female borrowers have consistently scored the highest in this regard, proving themselves to be a preferable credit risk to men. Across the board, the repayment rate of micro-loans among women hovers between 95% -100% as opposed to 65% - 85% for men.
Surprising statistic? No.
To us, as women, this statistic is not shocking on an intuitive level. After all, it is not difficult for us to imagine what we would do in a “desperate” situation if we had a sudden influx of additional money. What would be our priorities?
We would feed our children. We would get medical care for our families. We would make sure our children had shoes and a pencil and a uniform so they could go to school.
As it turns out, this is pretty much true for women everywhere: women spend what little money they earn on their children and their families. Women strive to pull everyone in their sphere a little bit further ahead in life. Their own personal gratification is not a high priority for them.
Micro-credit and ga’NEW
This is why the Global Action Network of Entrepreneurial Women has made our gaNEW Micro-credit Program a major component of our vision: because we women fundamentally understand each other. We may be separated by culture, language, economic access and geography. But we are all women. We all nurture others before we nurture ourselves, and we all understand viscerally that without each other, without the support of the women around us, we would be lost.
We have chosen Haiti as our first country of micro-credit participation because:rn1.For us in the Americas, Haiti is our neighborrn2.Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the population living below the poverty linern3.Haiti has had more than its share of struggle, torn — but not crushed — by lack of education, lack of basic health care, political strife, natural disaster, and diseasern4.ga’NEW has been able to team up with one of the world’s finest micro-credit programs, Fonkoze, which is also the oldest, largest, and most successful micro-credit program in Haiti.
Our determination to help our sisters-in-need lift themselves out of poverty and become self-sustaining entrepreneurs is unwavering.
I speak confidently when I say that the ga’NEW staff joins me in passionate perseverance of our goal: the economic empowerment of women globally — particularly those women for whom economic self-sufficiency is most distant and difficult. We know that together, we can help.
We also believe it is our responsibility to help our sisters.
It is the commonality among all of us women — our intrinsic connection and drive to unite in joy, compassion and power for the economic empowerment of all — that is both the spiritual and practical foundation of the Global Action Network of Entrepreneurial Women.
For more information and to contribute to the ga’NEW Micro-credit Program in Haiti, click here.
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media@ganew-connect.com. Thank you!