By Danielle, Wicki and Fatimah | Project Leaders
At the Clinton Global Initiative annual summit last week so much attention was given to how to augment the world’s economies, in all ways. Quality of life, education, and safety. One of the biggest needs that arises again and again, whether it is discussed by micro lending guru Muhammad Yunus, correspondent Katie Couric, Hilary Clinton or the Prime Minister of Haiti, is “How to get capital to the workers, harvesters, or mini entrepreneurs, often women, who really need it?”
At JUST SHEA we are proud to say that we have been current with the needs of rural families and have been addressing them with our harvesters for two years now. I bet you recall that we now have 375 JUST SHEA Women in our program, all of them equipped with safety gear (thanks to you and our generous partners at Moxie, NRG and Ghana Capital Partners) to protect them against poisonous snakes so they can harvest more, and all of them participating in a crop aggregation warehouse program that has seen their incomes double in the last year. But you may not know that we also have a small micro loan fund, which is insured by bags of shea that women in the JUST SHEA collaborative can utilize.
But now we want to increase the amount of micro loans we can give, so more women can earn more, and it seems that others have been impressed with our work, because wonder-founder Danielle Warren has been asked to participate in a “pitching” session in Berlin in November designed to put our ideas in front of a diverse groups of multi-national funders.
Of course we hope this will lead to new investments, but beyond that we need to have the continued support of our stalwart supporters. That would be you.
We are seeking an inner circle of support of $10,000 that will form the foundation of our micro loan program. Each of these loans will be repaid within 18 months and will then be available to the next women in line. So far we have had 100% repayment.
Well, I bet you are asking, What do women use these loans for?
Glad you asked, because the list is inspiring in itself. They want to buy seeds to plant crops for food and for sale, buy books and pencils for their children so they can get smarter in school, invest in small businesses, go to the clinic to deliver their babies. These may seem like small things for us. But for these women, for these families, it is life changing.
So please join us because on October 15th any donation you make will be doubled by the generous folks at Global Giving.
Mark your calendars, ping yourself. Or stay up until then. But do not miss this opportunity.
With so much Gratitude,
Danielle, Wicki, Fatimah, Fauzia, Assembly and all the Just Shea Ladies existing and to come.
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