Update from Kiva

In January 2008, Kiva closed its partnership with Women’s Trust, Inc. The amount of loans that Women’s Trust, Inc. could post to the Kiva website was small enough to make developing the partnership too costly.

Original description

Founder Dana Dakin started the WomensTrust in 2003 with the idea of creating a sustainable microlending program for women in a village in Ghana, West Africa. Today, in Pokuase (poe-KWA-see), a town of 20,000, WomensTrust has more than 700 loan clients (and two new loan programs launching in contiguous towns started by groups we have inspired).

Interest income supports our local loan administration with three full-time employees, and a small thriving office where groups of clients are screened, loans administered, and weekly repayments processed.

We have come to learn that credit alone is not enough to help a woman sustain herself and her family above the threshold of poverty. Three components play a vital role: access to credit and, equally important, access to education and healthcare.

On each of our semiannual visits we hold focus groups and meetings with our clients and our students to better understand how our programs are working and what modifications might be implemented to make them more effective.

As a result, we have a Keep-Girls-In-School scholarship program that currently supports 64 girls in three of Pokuase’s public primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools, and adult literacy classes for women. In the fall of 2006, we received five-year funding to launch an incentive program to reward our loan clients with fully paid enrollment in Ghana’s new national health insurance plan.

Accountability is the foundation of all our programs. Loan clients must repay their loans in a timely manner or face penalties, even losing access to the program. Our scholarship students maintain a 2.5 grade point average to remain eligible for their scholarships. And, health insurance is available only for clients in good standing.

We believe that empowering women and girls can help lift an entire village out of poverty. When women gain control of their income and girls are allowed to remain in school, the impact is immediate and social change is inevitable.

The WomensTrust logo captures our philosophy: it is a West African adinkra symbol representing interdependence and cooperation. We go to Ghana with questions not answers, partnering with our clients and students, engaging them in problem solving and guideline development. Our grassroots, bottom-up model results in the implementation of market driven programs and cooperative development.

Equally important, our model is replicable. It is our goal to inspire others to adopt and partner with their own villages in the developing world, raising awareness and encouraging their greater communities to share their resources – village to village, one village at a time. For more information please visit our website womenstrust.org

Womens Trust Inc. can be contacted via email at skraeger@womenstrust.org