Sponsor Microfinance: Empower Small Businesses

Summary

Project will provide training and financial booster-shot to small businesses, enabling them to start, expand and become self-sufficient. This assistance will help them to break the cycle of poverty. The beneficiaries receive education / training in business management that helps them succeed in their small businesses. Individuals and businesses become self-sufficient and this boosts economic development. Priority is given to women.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

According to the United Nations 2007-2008 Human Development report, Sierra Leone ranks as # 177 (last place) in Human Development Index. The UN estimates unemployment to be about 65 percent in Sierra Leone. Tens of thousands of youths and adults struggle to find a meaningful existence and are living below the poverty line. They are exposed to the temptations of resorting to a lifestyle of vices and destructive occupations. They desperately need help and a viable path to self-sufficiency.

How will this project solve this problem?

Selected participants will be provided with foundational training in business management / entrepreneurship and business capital. This capital will enable them to start or expand their businesses, become self-reliant and also employ others.

Potential Long Term Impact

Project will enable individuals and small businesses to move from making barely enough to meet their basic needs (living from hand to mouth) to a point where they will expand providing employment and contributing to national development.

Project Message

This project changes lives by providing a practical, sustainable path out of poverty. What better way to empower people by giving them a "hand up" and not simply a "hand out".
- Joanne Tucker, Project Coordinator