I have been investing in small business women for several years now. Today, many loans had been repaid, so I turned the money around and re-lent it to others.
Meet the Kayonza Twimuke Group of Kyenjojo, Uganda. One of their members, Anna, needs a microloan to buy beans for resale. The Group has eleven members and all work together to guarantee the loan will be repaid. Anna is a farmer and has been in business for the last four years. Her desires include educating her children and building a permanent house.
Join me and a world-wide community dedicated to combating poverty on http://www.kiva.org
Kiva allows you to make small loans to entrepreneurs on five continents, leveraging just $25 to change a life.
Microloans allow people to help themselves; microloans are not a hand out, but a hand up -- I am a business partner with these people, and they are hard working.
Microlending means providing hard working people in developing countries and the USA a few hundred dollars to help them start or improve a tiny business. Their own hard work can bring them and their whole community up and out of poverty, with dignity and self esteem.
All microloans are administered on the ground by charities who also provide money management training, literacy classes, and so on. Your microloan is not a "hand out"; you go into business with the person.
Yes, the economy is bad, but you can start with just $25. And you get it back (that's why it's called micro-LENDING).
An excellent agency is Kiva: http://www.kiva.org/
You can check out my investments at the links below. At the webpage, click on "loans" to see the loans made to groups around the globe.
"Debbie's Family" are my loans in lieu of Christmas presents -- my family wanted to get away from the materialism of Christmas shopping last year.
http://www.kiva.org/lender/debbie7735
JustFaith2 are the investments of my JustFaith group; in the JustFaith program, I first learned how very effective microlending can be. Catholic Relief Services highly recommends it.
http://www.kiva.org/team/st_charles_borromeo_just_faith_ii
About the photo: Kahooza John Bosco is the leader of his lending group in Ibanda. He is a very hardworking and friendly man. He is 38 years old and married with 2 children, both of whom are in primary school; he also takes care of 2 dependants. He has had a retail shop in the Nyarukika trading centre for 15 years, where he is able to make 120,000 as profits a week. This is mostly attributed to the use of the loans that enabled him to have a variety of items in the shop. In the future, John Bosco would want to sell wholesale so that he could sell more and consequently have a happy and united family. He is seeking for a loan to be able buy more products for his shop so as to avoid shortages.
