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by Anna H. Bedford What do a woman weaving grass baskets in Bangladesh, a woman selling bread from her kitchen in Bolivia and a woman selling sugar a cupful at a time on the street in Haiti have in common? They need a little bit of cash to buy ingredients for their product, and they need a safe place to keep the money they make. All three women are susceptible to loan sharks who charge exorbitant interest and thieves who steal their profits from under the mattress. Millions of women with low incomes, like the women described above, are taking advantage of small loans known as microcredit to overcome the obstacles that prevent them from improving their lives. Most often, the borrowers are women who already supply the hard work and imagination needed to lift their family out of abject poverty into self-reliance. What they lack is knowledge and basic resources. With the help of supportive peer groups, they can and do repay their loans and improve their microbusinesses.
Microcredit is making differences in the lives of women around the world. Learn about the success of one such program in Haiti, and how it helped Marie François Neptune and her family in the September/October 2005 issue of Horizons. Call 800/524-2612 |
Investing in HopePresbyterian Women participates in microcredit programs that empower women through Oikocredit, an ecumenical program begun in 1975 as a response to the founding of the World Bank. Unlike that organization, however, Oikocredit does not lend to governments, but directly to business groups. Grants of up to $2 million are given to organizations that deal directly with grassroots borrowers. For example, Fonkoze recently received an equity loan of $400,000 from Oikocredit. The money came from an original investment by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Self-Development of People. Mary Pardee, a member of Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, began serving on the Oikocredit international board of directors in 1980. She is still one of its strongest supporters. She says, “If you give to Oikocredit, you are a stockholder, not a one-time donor to whom the poor come begging. Your money is used over and over.” Mary also points out that, “you earn a two percent return on your investment—lower than Wall Street but guaranteed. You become a business partner with a group of entrepreneurs who are poor. They can’t get a traditional bank loan, but they have a 92 percent loan repayment record. Usually, only a natural disaster like a hurricane or drought stops them from repaying their loans.” In 1988, Presbyterian Women invested $25,000 in Oikocredit, from the offering collected during the 1988 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women. “It’s time to add to it!” says Mary. She lists PW in the Synod of the Covenant as a current investor and congregations such as her own Fox Chapel and East Liberty Presbyterian Church, also of Pittsburgh, as enthusiastic supporters. “Constant, dependable income from small businesses is the best way to lift up a community,” she says. “This is the wave of the future!” |
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