Kiva Update – LEAP, Liberia; Hekima, DR Congo; Turame, Burundi; UOB, Rwanda and CREDIT, Cambodia

World Relief is pleased to add more microfinance institutions (MFIs) to the Kiva.org website. In the last few months, LEAP, Liberia; Hekima, DR Congo; and UOB, Rwanda have joined CREDIT, Cambodia as field partners for Kiva.org. Turame is the first MFI in Burundi to be a Kiva.org field partner.

Kiva.org gives you the opportunity to help a microentrepreneur to develop her business. You lend directly through one of World Relief’s MFIs to a client, who then repays the loan to the MFI with interest. Your loan is repaid by the MFI to you. It is a sustainable method of reducing poverty.

Visit:

LEAP Liberia, Kiva.org

CREDIT Cambodia, Kiva.org

The links to the other websites will be added shortly.

2009 Walk For Economic Empowerment

Update! Walk For Economic Empowerment

Baltimore | Boston 26 September 2009

  

The 2009 Walk For Economic Empowerment is nearly here! This Saturday people in Baltimore and Boston will be walking to support World Relief’s Savings For Life programs in Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Malawi.

So far, you have helped us raise over $28,000. We’ve also received gifts from Cambodia, Rwanda, Malawi, Liberia and Tanzania. Our target is to raise $35,000, and it isn’t too late to sign-up and walk, our to sponsor your favorite walker.

Every $25 raised enables World Relief to train someone in financial literacy, helping them learn how to save and effectively manage their money. Working in groups, they are able to lend to one another when they need access to extra capital, either to meet lifecycle events, such as during an illness or in preparation for a wedding, or they can borrow to build an expand a business. By lending funds to one another they receive interest payments that grow their assets even further.

Help us empower more people, sign-up to walk www.w4ee.org or sponsor your favorite walker www.wr.org/wee.

Turame Community Finance Staff Profile - Rose Niyonizigiye

Staff: Rose Niyonizigiye
TURAME Branch: Bujumbura Office
Position: Loan Officer

Rose sits at her desk with a deep sense of satisfaction; her journey leading to TURAME has been a particularly long one filled with many difficulties. Rose is married and mother to five children, the first of which is attending Hope University of Africa. She is also the guardian of two additional children of her husband’s relative.

From 2004 to 2006, Rose was unemployed, and with such a large family to support she found herself in desperate circumstances. Prior to 2004, Rose had been working on a project called FEPADE with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees), a UN agency that protects and supports refugees around the world. Unfortunately, she had come under corrupt leadership. The leaders of the project stole a sum equivalent to about $300,000; FEPADE was left financially stranded. After working for two months without pay, she had no choice but to leave.

During her time of unemployment, Rose had to rely on income generated from selling phone cards to send her children to school. She found herself contemplating evicting the two children of her husband’s relative. However, she stalled her decision upon hearing about loan possibilities from a community bank called TURAME. She applied for loans from TURAME and eventually became the leader of her community bank group. After three months of being a client, Rose learned of a job opening at the bank and applied. In time, she was hired.

When asked what she has gained by being a part of the TURAME staff, Rose responded by saying she had no appropriate words to answer with, she simply gave thanks and glory to God for her employment. She no longer has to deliberate evicting the two children as she is able to fund all her children’s education. Furthermore, TURAME has provided her with employee loans with which she has bought school supplies and a plot of land.

Rose wishes to continue to serve TURAME diligently. She also hopes that the entire TURAME staff will continue to work in Christ, if they do, she believes nothing can stop TURAME from reaching sustainability. She concluded with a prayer request that alluded to Matthew 6:19-24: that “moth and rust” would not destroy TURAME, but that in seeking after “treasures in heaven”, they would become an enduring institution.