Last year some Pennswood Village residents in Newtown donated $6,500 to fund a micro-lending Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR) group in Kenya.
Right Sharing of World Resources (www.rswr.org) is a small Quaker organization with projects in India, Kenya, Guatemala and Sierra Leone providing small grants to groups of impoverished women who then make microloans to their members to engage in start-up businesses and small-scale business through community self-help initiatives.
The women run their businesses, generate income, and pay back their loans with interest to the group, which then uses the repaid money to make more loans to other women to fund more businesses.
For the RSWR project, the 30 women took up six different businesses: fish mongering (since they are close to Lake Victoria), cereals buying and selling, secondhand clothes and shoes, vegetable and fruit stalls, milk vending, and grocery kiosks selling essential goods like sugar, salt, soap, flour, cooking oil, etc. After six months, they report that the project is going well. Almost all of the women have been able to repay their first loans and have now taken second loans.
Will Reid, an active member of the Pennswood Village Right Sharing group, said, “This is a terrific report. Through their own efforts and small financial loans, these women are dramatically improving their lives, and those of their families, while simultaneously building sustainable, mutually beneficial relationships with others in their surrounding community. I believe micro-loans are the strongest instruments we have to enable the poorest of the poor to bring about their own development and help achieve a more just world.”
After receiving the positive report, the Pennswood Village Quaker group promptly agreed to raise an additional $6,500 to fund a new RSWR group in India, Kenya, Sierra Leone or Guatemala.
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