There are some not-for-profit organizations that help women all around the world attain financial security both personally and on the family front. These organizations achieve this purpose through entrepreneurship. As an individual, you can also support the cause being championed by any of these organizations.
Kula Project
The organization seeks to get rid of poverty in the country, Rwanda. It seeks to achieve that by equipping entrepreneurs with the requisite skills through the program known as the Kula Fellowship. The Fellowship program is generally open to members of both gender, but Kula further has 2 Women’s Centers specially set up to vocational training majorly to women.
- Those women get to be a part of different business training and are equipped with specific skills to help them set up their personal agriculture, sewing, and weaving businesses. At the centers, the women are taught how to create products with their hands as well as agribusiness products that can be sold in their domestic market.
Friendship Bridge
This project is for the empowerment of women in Guatemala, a country that has suffered from the effects of war. Friendship Bridge’s goal is to empower these women to create a life that is better than what they currently have. Friendship Bridge offers small loans to poor women that have been labeled unbakanble with the aim of providing them with an opportunity to expand their small businesses while also serving as a positive step to the creation of sustainable solutions for poverty alleviation.
The organization’s Microcredit Plus program has been accessed by over 22,000 women. The prospective borrowers are expected to create groups comprising of something between 7 and 25 members. These groups are known as Trust Banks and there is a co-guarantee of the loans taken by individual members. At the meetings held monthly by these Trust Banks, the women have informal education trainings.
Friendship Bridge also has another program known as Artisan Market Access where artisans and artists are trained to develop products that would be seen as appealing on a global scale. Interested person can get involved with the program through volunteering , hosting events for fund-raising or donating to any of their causes.
Women for Women International
This organization makes different programs available for marginalized women living in war or conflict-affected countries. These programs are geared towards helping the women earn money and to also have their own savings. Women for Women International has an economic and social empowerment program that runs all through the year.
During those programs, they set up classes compromising of twenty five women that form support networks where they get to share their experiences and also learn relevant skills that provides them with the necessary things to support their immediate families financially.
Upon the completion of the program, theae women also have access to a program for graduate support where continued mentorship is encouraged and they are also provided with addition business and financial training. Interested individuals can support this organization through different ways such as making a monetary contribution of $35 to sponsor a woman and continuously support a specific woman.
Women’s Global Empowerment Fund
This combines leadership and business development training together with microcredit loans for the empowerment of women of Northern Uganda. The sole aim is to help these women become pillars of support for their families. The organizationhas a program, Credit Plus, and the participants of the program are expected to be in attendance at regularly held meetingswhere they get the chance to take different classes where they learn leadership development, business skills, health and literacy.
The major goal of all the trainings is to help the women get a sustainable source of income, contribute to a substantial increment of food security for them and also help them improve the nutrition and overall health of their families.
Kiva
The last but not the least organization is Kiva. Kiva helps to crowdfund on an average, $2.5 million loans weekly for the borrowers that come from over 80 countries. It helps borrowers all across the world who ordinarily have difficulty in getting any other affordable and fair credit option.
In America, it gives loans to borrowers who are at the forefront of the creation of social change in their respective communities or those who have been financially excluded. Borrowers from Kiva include artisans, farmers, builders, shopkeepers, students, among several others.
The loans are generally made available for both male and female, but 81% of the borrowers are women. To be sure that your contribution is used to help a woman, you can specifically search for women entrepreneurs.