Microcredits and Small Businesses
Microcredit and Small Businesses
Microcredits
Empowering Women
Yen Daakye – meaning Our Future – is the name Ashanti women originally chose for this project, which was launched in 2009. It provides women in selected villages with training in numeracy and business management.
The scheme offers three sequential loans, enabling many women to become economically independent. Most of the loans are used for trading or small-scale farming, or for making fast food for hungry farmers at the end of their working day.
Growing Prosperity
So far, Yendaakye covers 36 villages. Progress is slow because each woman needs time to pay back three or four loans before the project moves on – but in the meantime some of their enterprises expand rapidly and several of the women have become (relatively) wealthy.
Beekeeping
We have trained more than 100 beekeepers through our tried-and-tested beekeeping programme. We have also trained a dedicated beekeeper to carry on the work and deal with problems in our absence.
Locally Sourced, locally made…
Our dress-making school makes protective bee suits, while a local timber mill cuts wood for assembly into beehives and stands for them to rest on.
From Honey to Income
The project produces a number of small-scale enterprises and one or two which earn enough to extend their houses or put their children through school.
Dress making School
Not all students are academic, but there’s not much choice of occupation for those who aren’t to marry or to work on the family farm. To offer a third alternative, Ashanti Development built a dressmaking school, which is presided over by a professional tailor, Kofi Boampong.
Opening up opportunities to single women…
Most of the students are unmarried mothers, many of whom had arduous lives collecting firewood and carrying it on their heads to sell in the nearest market.
Building Independent Futures
So far, twenty students have passed through the school, of whom eight have set up their own dressmaking businesses
Stall at Camden Market
Ashanti Development often buys the products of the dressmaking school and sells them in the UK to make extra money for the charity. We have a stall every Saturday in Camden Market and sell through several other retail outlets.
Hardship
The full benefits of many of our projects will not be felt for several years. In the meantime, we fear for the wellbeing of the old, the sick, the disabled and otherwise vulnerable.
In the knowledge that this project is unsustainable, we now give a small pension to selected villagers in some communities.
In the knowledge that this project is unsustainable, we now give a small pension to selected villagers in some communities.
Registered charity no. 1133517.
Registered in England and Wales.
21 Downing Court, London WC1N 1LX.
Join our mailing list here.
SOCIAL
© Copyright Ashanti Developments