Elizabeth Anyidoho

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Elizabeth Anyidoho by Christian Rural Aid Network (CRAN) in Ghana. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 6 months of this loan, Christian Rural Aid Network (CRAN) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

As a single parent, it is not easy for Elizabeth to make ends meet. She works hard to provide for her children by making and selling “cooco”, a porridge made from millet, ginger and pepper. Initially it was mistakenly reported that Elizabeth has just two children. In fact, she has three, and she alone must pay for their school fees. She is also responsible for rent and all other household expenses. However, finances were even more difficult to manage before Elizabeth started borrowing from Christian Rural Aid Network (CRAN). Back then, she had to buy the ingredients for her porridge on credit. When I asked her how much interest she paid on those loans, she told me she was paying 30% PER MONTH (not per annum, as most financial institutions charge). This interest ate heavily into her profits. When she heard about CRAN and the terms of their microloans, she made the decision to borrow from CRAN instead.

Now Elizabeth has been with CRAN for two years. In that time, she has quadrupled her income from 10 cedis per week to 40 cedis per week. With this last loan, Elizabeth purchased more millet, ginger and pepper so that she could make more porridge and expand her client base. And though she has made a profit that has allowed her to pay for the children’s school fees and the rest of her expenses, the profit has not been what Elizabeth had hoped for, and she tells me that she isn’t seeing a significant change in her circumstances. She blames this on the rain, and on the slow market. It is harder to sell in the rain, because people are in a hurry to get to work, and don’t want to stop to buy her porridge. It is also true that in Elizabeth’s coastal fishing community, the local economy is experiencing a slump due to the fact that a low catch of fish pumps very little money into the community, so that people have less to spend. One way people have of cutting back expenses is to eat at home instead of buying ready-made food on the streets.

Elizabeth has hope for the future, though. She owns a piece of land that she inherited from her father, and she hopes to one day save enough profits to begin building a home on it. The fact remains that Elizabeth says that she finds it easier to manage her expenses now, than before she began borrowing from CRAN. On behalf of Elizabeth and her children, I thank you for making that possible through your generous loan.

About Christian Rural Aid Network:

Christian Rural Aid Network is a non-governmental, rural development organization established in 1993 with the aim of promoting an improvement in the quality of life and the socio-economic development of the rural poor in Ghana. Based in Cape Coast and operating in three regions and seven different districts, CRAN’s work is based on the values of Christian motivation and obligation towards the development of the individual as a whole, employing and promoting “demand-led” or “self-help” strategies for community development and rural poverty reduction. CRAN’s mission is to “work towards the improvement in the quality of life of the rural poor, the disadvantaged and the marginalized populations and communities in a holistic fashion (physically, socially, economically and spiritually), with emphasis on the right of children to quality formal education, in addition to the economic and social empowerment of women in a professional and qualitative manner”. To learn more about CRAN, click here. To browse through profiles of recent CRAN loan applicants and to make a loan to another worthy CRAN loan client, click here.