Through donations we make micro loans to poor women in Africa. These loans help start small businesses that will sustain a woman and her family and enable them to work their way out of poverty. Your donations are loaned out and repaid over and over, so a single donation can help many families lift themselves out of grinding poverty.
Success is Sweet! See the huge changes made possible through Micro Loans!
Click here and watch the video to see how micro loans have changed Alice's life!
What We Do
What Are Micro Loans?
Micro loans are small loans as little as $50 loaned to women to establish or expand a self-sustaining small business. Micro loans in developing countries are often the only way to build a path out of poverty. Small loans, big impact! To survive women create their own income by starting tiny businesses, and micro loans can help an entrepreneurial woman establish or expand her business.
The People We Serve
Women in the poorest areas of Africa, including Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania are our clients. They create small business selling products like goat meat, cooking oil, and second hand clothing. Some of the women also have businesses like small hotels and salons. Micro loans have made the difference between earning $27 a month to earning more than $164 a month which is a 500% increase in income.
How You Can Help
Donating to the Greater Contribution will provide micro loans to entrepreneurial women in the poorest areas of Africa. Making a onetime gift or a monthly donation is easy through our secure website. Hosting a house party fund raiser to spread the word to family and friends about the Greater Contribution’s work in Africa. Volunteer your time or talents by completing our volunteer form on our website.
Why Women Helping Women?
Approximately seventy percent of the people who receive loans from The Greater Contribution are women. We are often asked why. The reasons are rooted in both the practicality of fighting poverty in the most effective way possible and in the realities of life in the developing countries where we work. They are:
- Seventy percent of the world's poor are women, largely because of their limited access to education or to productive resources like land and credit.
- Women entrepreneurs invest the profits from their businesses in ways that have a longer-lasting, more profound impact on the lives of their families and communities.
- Research confirms that the key economic priorities for poor women -to a far greater extent than for men -continue to be health care, the education of their children, and housing
- A growing worldwide trend is woman-headed households, in which a mother provides the sole support for her children.
- According to UNICEF, at least half of the 12 million children aged five or younger who die each year, die from malnutrition associated with severe poverty. The most direct way to improve children's survival and welfare is to strengthen their own mothers' ability to take care of them.
- When women have a sustainable income, are decision-makers, and have strong social networks and safety-nets, they are in a much stronger position to advocate for their rights.
