The microfinance concept is very simple. It is built on the what we called the 50/50 partnership model. the model requires projects participants to have “skin in the game”. In the case of the WEP program, we require women to raise the initial capital on their own promising them we would match whatever money they would raise. That is how funds are raised. Loans are then given with a 10% interest rate charged to the recipients.
Our first group of women,250 strong, raised $5,000 over 6 months by charging a $10 membership fee per member of the coop and working as a group into other people’s farms to make the difference. The funds are managed by the women themselves as well as the loans attributions. We only play monitoring and auditing roles.
