A Common Story: A Shared Success

Today I want today to share some of the individual success stories from our market women. But as I go through them I find myself in a bit of a dilemma; the stories I really want to share are the ones where market women have overcome what seem like impossible challenges. They are all great stories, but I feel like I'm airing someone's personal pain all over the Internet without them really knowing.

So instead, I'm going to tackle this a bit more generally.

The women we work with are supporting their children and families which means meeting all their basic needs. This means food, housing, water, education and health. Sometimes they are the ones responsible for doing this simply because of low levels of overall household income but often there are other complications.

It seems like at least half the women I talk to have had spouses who walked out on them. A lot of women suffered from abuse or were abandoned for getting pregnant (or in other cases for not getting pregnant). For some of them circumstances were so bad that they had to flee their community and that is why they are here in Dar es Salaam. On top of losing the support of an income earner, these women lost the property they had invested in, were chased from their homes and in some cases had their businesses and livelihoods destroyed by angry or abusive husbands.

And so they started over. They scrapped together capital with savings and loans from friends to start a small business. However they often get stuck because with low capital they can't start a strong and profitable business. In addition, most of these women were never prepared by education (formal or otherwise) to enter business.

EfG helps women save as a group and then loan money to each other to slowly build their business and capital. Women buy “shares” at a set amount every week and then are able to borrow up to 3 times as much as they contribute. So far, there are 23 groups with a total capital of $39,000 among them. Pretty amazing given that most women only bring in around $6 a day and are still supporting their families. Loans provide for everything from business improvements and diversification of activities to buying property and paying school fees.

All the funds are self-raised. As a group the women can share business success and advice among each other. They support each other when they are sick and unable to work. These women are literally able to lift each other up. And at the end of the day they are the cause of their own success. That sort of empowerment can't be given through a workshop, it only comes from being the one to change things for yourself.

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