Micro-Lending Training

From Liz Uible

One can not give a credit line to a high school student who has no
financial experience and expect her to use it wisely with no training.
In the same way, you can not give a $100 business loan to a woman
in a village in Rwanda without training her on how to run a
business and take care of money. The one week training is to
teach her that the loan is to grow her business and the profit is
to pay living expenses. Not the other way around.

On Tuesday, we went to see the training for micro-lending that Dr.
Immaculee has created. She has this very dynamic man who
knows everyone’s name and gets really excited. He seems
interesting to learn from. The trainings are done in Kinyarwanda,
the local language. (In Rwanda they also speak French and English,
but only the well educated.)

Liz Uible with Rwandan Women in Training

Christine Harvey with future micro loan recipients

We were invited for the second day of the 20-person training
sponsored by the WomenforWealth.com Foundation for Micro-lending.
These are twenty mostly HIV positive women who, when they are
done with the training and present a verbal business plan, will get
a small loan to start a business. The loans will be under $100.
We met each participant and shook hands. There was a woman
with a small child who she entertained as she took in the lessons.
We communicated mostly with our eyes.

The instructor talks to them as a large group and then they break up
and do work in 3-4 small groups to do assignments. Tuesday morning
they were talking about their expectations of what they would
learn and what that new knowledge would help bring them. One
person from each group would write the verbal ideas on flip chart
paper and then they shared them as a group.

One of the great things about that format is that is promotes
reconciliation among women whose communities were torn apart
by genocide just 14 years ago.

Madeleine Nichols holds hands with women at training

I was really impressed. I discovered a bias I held about the
illiterate of the world. Maybe it comes from elementary school
when by third grade the children who didn’t know how to read or
write yet were labeled ‘slow’ –and really did seem that way. I
did not know I had that bias until I met these women and was
truly surprised by their intelligence and self-confidence. We talked
to them about how excited we are for their futures, and they
made speeches right back to us with confidence and ability! It
was truly remarkable.

A woman from the Village gives a speech of thanks (with translator)

And then at the end, with a sense of love and fun, we danced.
And that was the best of all.

Dancing with the Micro Lending training participants

A group photo: Dr Immaculee is in the blue suit in the centerand
Christina Willings, who filmed the whole, is in black