Micro-finance: Will be a top saviour for women.

I have visited many communities in Kenya and realized how much power the women have,and how much more power we could have if we were financially empowered! Many women have to stay in poverty due to lack of small start-up capital to start businesses.

How can women get financial empowerment? Most women do not have direct access to loans since the dont have "security" and are so considered a high risk to the financial institutions.Some that are kind enough to give such women loans do so to groups? Why in groups and not as individuals? So that the women are each other's guarantors and must pay should a member default.Most of these groups have inhuman laws for their members who default,even for only a month.Their household property is taken by the group,and any assets such as animals and sold off at throw away prices for default for as little as Ksh1 000.This is about 15 dollars.

Who knows which institutions have good lending terms for women.How can we start our small micr-finance institutions to empower our groups and communities?

Many Kenyan women are able to come up economically in a short span of time.All we need is support and empowerment.The advantage of this would be to have richer and more educated communities.Kenyan women are known to be be better at paying back loans than men.They have also proved to be good enterpreneurs and have diverse talent in making fantastic handicraft.

Lending institutions in Kenya have proved women at being better and more reliable in paying back loans than their male counterparts.Why then,should they be the ones to sugger most when it comes to issues of empowerment?

I would love us to use this forum to share ideas and discussions on how we can take care of this to empower all our women and communities.

Love,
Leah.