The majority of Angolans face a daily battle with poverty and women especially lack access to education, jobs & healthcare. Last year a group of women in an Anglican parish in Luanda were identified as those who would benefit from receiving a loan of a small amount of money to start businesses and kickstart access to better standard of living.
Therefore with the help of a grant from the Bishop of Oxford Outreach Fund, MANNA began a new microcredit fund based at St Jose Parish in Luanda in the Anglican Diocese of Angola. The aim is to lend small amounts to these women who would pay the loan back after 5 months under supervision and then the fund would lend the capital onto others.
And so the microcredit Project ‘Mulher Jovem‘ began. The first cohert of women received a loan of between US$100-250 and began with business training. All these women had no other access to savings or loans so otherwise they would not be able to start their businesses.
It’s amazing what these entrepeneurial women have managed to do. They have gone on to begin a wide variety of businesses including;
A motorbike taxi service (funds helped the purchase), wigs, agricultural products, clothes, retail products, cakes. en.
Production of wigs
Selling agricultural & retail products
Selling clothes
Cake making business
What’s more, these business are having other knock-on effects:
- The women are also making a ‘solidarity soup’ that gets taken on to community centres to those in need.
- Many are training others as part of their businesses to make wigs & shirts, cakes etc.
- They have plans to build a community centre where they want to make things and train others.
- Many of the women are participating in courses in business studies run by the government to know how to improve their business.
- The women are now independent, confident and earning salaries for themselves.
- The women are finding their own way out of poverty and helping others along the way.
For more information about this work and how to support it, get in touch: [email protected]
