Women make sense with money

A LOCAL organisation says women who take loans from institutions have a high rate of paying back, as such, they are worth supporting financially.

Natalie Goredema the director of a local company Moms Are Genius (MAGs) said her company would continue assisting women to access credit lines to aid in their empowerment.

Speaking during their annual fundraising dinner at a local hotel on Thursday last week, Goredema said women's zeal to see their projects succeed is what drives them to pay up.

"We have discovered that women pay back loans once we give them, our success rate has been very high with the loans we have given them such that we will continue to assist them because of this reliability. They always want their projects to work so they pay back so as to access more in the future," she said.

Goredema said her organisation offers intervention which allows women with no collateral, normally considered a high risk by micro-finance lenders to access credit.

The organisation has funded women from Gokwe North and South, Bulawayo, Rusape, Kezi, Plumtree, Glendale and Gwanda with various agricultural projects.

Asked why the organisation was targeting agricultural projects for women empowerment, she said the turnaround time was very quick and women were able to pay back and access more funds.

Tidings Chimpondah the founder of the organisation said she was motivated to start the project after realising that women were reliable and able to carry out agricultural activities well.

"I realised that women have always produced food for their families at a small scale but when the economy took a down turn they slowed down and some even stopped but potential has always been there. So now I assist these women to pick up from where they left off and feed families and also contribute to economic recovery," she said.

Chimpondah said many of the women were eager to start agricultural projects but the start-up capital was a challenge for many of them.

The founder said since the project started they have assisted 2 000 women in starting up projects countrywide.

She said the initial project funding started with four women in Gokwe who were assisted and started a chicken rearing project.  They notified her that there were other women who were interested and it grew.

"These women used to grow maize, paprika and many more so we then assisted them because they had the capacity already. They have since grown from chicken projects to keeping cattle, pigs and goats. They came to us and said they had identified other women who could benefit from projects and that is how we grew," she said.

Chimpondah said women who work for their starting capital dictate what projects they can venture into, unlike having donors dictate what they want the women to do.

MAGs provides a revolving fund for start-up capital to groups of rural and urban women. They said women bear the brunt of social problems encountered in communities and as such believe that a social enterprise will address just those problems.

The ladies each receive assistance for three cycles of their project and afterwards they should be in a position to stand on their own. The capital is then invested with another group.

The project focuses on building local capacity to the extent that by the end of the project period MAGs can exit the partnership leaving the beneficiaries with the skills and experience to continue supporting livelihoods development independently of the proposed project.