A grant program for businesswomen in Ghana

A little good news today, from the African success story of Ghana. Even with the economy performing well, Ghana still struggles with an education gap between men and women. This gap makes it difficult for women to earn a meaningful wage later on in life.

The education charity Camfed has teamed up with Mastercard to give women a kick-start. Women who were educated by Camfed can apply for grants from Mastercard Foundation to invest in their own businesses.

From the Guardian, writer Afua Hirsch describes the program.

Camfed – which has provided funding for more than 66,000 children to attend primary and secondary school in Ghana since 1998 – believes it has found a way to supplement the poor quality education on offer in state-run schools. In 2002 it created a Ghana "Cama network" of Camfed alumni, which brings together young women who have graduated with its support.

Cama members are able to access skills training on financial literacy, business, leadership and life skills through the network's twice-monthly meetings. And since last year, those who complete training are eligible for "innovation bursaries" – a Camfed/Mastercard Foundation collaboration that offers small grants to female entrepreneurs to kickstart their businesses, together with work experience in relevant industries. Since the first nine bursaries were awarded in Ghana last September, six women have launched businesses, and all are turning a profit, says Camfed.

In Fuo, a rural suburb of Tamale, the capital of Ghana's northern region and one of the poorest parts of the country, 31-year-old Balchesu Iddrisu has turned her husband's family compound into a small food processing hub. Outside are mounds of rice, which she has employed a local elderly woman to sift, removing stones.

A room inside the building contains piles of wheat, soya and maize, which Iddrisu blends with milk creamer and groundnuts to make her own recipe for "weenie mix" – breakfast porridge. Iddrisu sells more than 1,200 units of weenie mix a month – at about £1 a bag – and she has begun approaching large supermarket chains and hospitals to buy in bulk. By buying her ingredients directly from local farmers, she says she has cut out middle men and is able to influence the quality of producers' crops.

"I am very happy with the way my business is going," Iddrisu says. "It helps me and my family a lot. I didn't even know I could reach this level, with people working under me and creating jobs in my community. In 10 years' time I believe that I will have my own factory, and I will be training many people to become entrepreneurs."

CSEM; helping women entrepreneurs in Guatemala

There are a greater percentage of women in poverty in Latin America then men. The percentages for women are almost double than those for men. So the women who do want to strike out on their own with a business need a little extra support. An organization called Centros de Servicios para los Emprendimientos de las Mujeres helpes women in Guatemala to receive funding and draw up business plans.

From IPS, writer Danilo Valladares gives us one CSEM sucess story.

Rosenda Gómez, a 53-year-old mother of five, knows all about challenges. To overcome them, she started a modest sausage business in Guatemala, and thanks to her leadership skills and training and other support she received, she is now an example of the economic empowerment of women.

Sixteen years ago she began to make homemade sausages in her village, Laguna Ocubilá, to sell in the nearby city of Huehuetenango, the capital of the northwestern province of the same name.

But her business was a micro-enterprise that allowed her family to just barely scrape by -- until things changed radically three years ago, when the Centros de Servicios para los Emprendimientos de las Mujeres (CSEM) came to her village.

CSEM, a network of centres providing technical and financial services for women entrepreneurs, is sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in association with Guatemalan institutions.

"We began to receive support, in the form of credit, training to improve our products, and promotion of our chicken and pork sausages in markets and fairs -- none of which we had before," Gómez told TerraViva.

With that boost, Gómez, who only went to school up to third grade, managed to increase production from five to 50 kgs of sausages a week, and demand continues to grow.
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Social organisations point to the vicious circle of poverty, lack of education and lack of health care suffered by so many in this country of 14.3 million people, where the poverty rate is slightly higher for women (51.5 percent) than for men (48.4 percent), according to the 2006 national survey on living conditions.

Rita Cassisi, UNIFEM coordinator in Guatemala, told TerraViva that the CSEM helps women set up businesses by offering loans, organisational training, assistance in improving products, marketing techniques and other support.

"One of the vacuums that we have seen is women's access to financing, which is why the programme is focused on a strategy of economic empowerment at the local, national and regional levels," she explained.