HOME MAKERS was founded in 1995 by Margaret Ahmed with a fellowship of 6 women teaching 1-2 skills and the Word of God. Today, Home Makers can be found throughout 9 different states in Nigeria and several regions in the bordering country of Niger. Home Makers offers practical trainings each month in activities that can supply women with marketable items to sell. Along with the trainings, the women are also given talks on money management and budgeting, child rearing and healthy living practices. Home Makers's aim is to help train, educate, enlighten and empower these women for business management and for personal and social economic development.

HOME MAKERS focuses on several different strategies as well as a number of different resources that Margaret provides for the women. These include workshops and seminars, open dialogues or conversations concerning questions and/or frustrations, outreaches, micro-credit facilities, and Bible teaching and discussion. Each month at the workshops, Margaret has been able to teach a new business skill to the women. Some of the businesses these women may learn may range anywhere from bread making and candle making to poultry farming. They key to these businesses sustainability depends on the initial start-up cost and product's marketability. Margaret makes every effort to provide jobs that have a limited start-up cost (besides poultry farming) so that the women are able to afford any extra necessities involved in the beginning of a business. Enter micro-loans...

Two years ago, Margaret was given $1,000 to begin distributing loans to the attendies of her training sessions. She started with ten loans of $100 each. She charged 20% interest (which is 15-20% less than the local banks and money lenders). The first women to receive these loans were quick to return the principal and interest. After the initial microloans were distributed, Margaret has worked to develop a system that allows her to use these loans to be recycled and passed down to more and more women. The success rate of this system can be seen through the statistics: as of January 2007 more than 65 loans have been distributed with a 97% successful return rate.

There is an estimated 2.8 billion people living in poverty. More than 300 million of the continent of Africa's 725 million people are estimated to live on less than $1 day. This makes the percentage of African's living in acute poverty more than 40%. Nearly 30,000 children die each day from poverty related causes.

How can we help? Give a loan and change a life...forever.

Muhammad Yunus has put the global spotlight on the radical theory of microfinance when he and his Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The basic idea of this theory is to teach the poor how to help themselves by giving them small unsecured loans, known as micro-credit.

"Loan the poor people money on terms that are suitable to them, teach them a few sound financial principals, and they will help themselves." (Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty)

Yunus created a method that would break the cyclical entrapment of extreme poverty. It is the basic principal of teaching a person to fish rather than giving them the fish to begin with. Due to a lack of financial structure and a complete lack of sufficient credit and access to financial resources, microfinance opportunities, such as Home Makers, are allowing the people within these impoverished countries to gain a foothold above the economic base.

How does it work?

Typically these tiny loans are given in increments anywhere between $50-150 to specific individuals or in groups of 3-5 people. Often times, the group loans are more successful when complications of repayment, dishonesty, and crisis come along. Interest rates for these loans are rather high, ranging anywhere between 20-35 percent. In Nigeria, the interest rates reported in local banks and money lenders can reach up to 35-40 percent.

This presents a problem for individuals trapped in poverty. Not only do individuals in extreme poverty not have the credit needed to get a loan from local banks, but they would not be able to afford the payments with such high interest rates. Banks in these third world countries are not able to cater to the credit needs of the poor which has lead to the success of microfinance initiatives. Mohammad Yunus, as well as several largely successful microfinance institutions, have reported that more than 98% of their loans are repaid.

There has been a great focus on loans given to women. This emphasis has come due to several studies showing the efficiency and timeliness of payback on such loans from women. These studies also showed these women using their earnings to benefit their family's needs (food, clothing, education, etc.). "When money enters into the household through a woman she is able to then bring more benefits to the family as a whole" (Yunus, 72).

Nigeria - Brief Country Profile

According to the United Nations, Nigeria has been undergoing explosive population growth and one of the highest growth and fertility rates in the world. They are the ninth most populous country in the world, and one out of every four Africans are Nigerian. In comparison to other African nations, Nigeria's HIV/AIDs rate is much lower. However, it is still a large problem.

Nigeria's Delta region, home of the large oil industry, experiences serious oil spills and other environmental problems. Nigeria is the 12th largest producer of petroleum in the world and the 8th largest exporter, and has the 10th largest proven reserves. It was also a founding member of OPEC. However, years of military rule, corruption, and mismanagement have hobbled economic activity and output in Nigeria and continue to do so, despite the restoration of democracy and subsequent economic reform.

Nigeria's new president, Umaru Yar'Adua, won the recent elections in April 2007 which were condemned by local and foreign observers, who alleged widespread vote-rigging. In his bid for the presidency, he has promised to fight corruption.

"A major means to improve the status of women is to open women's access to finance."

A woman's economic position directly affects her ability to purchase health, housing and education for herself and family, position in bargaining power in the family and community, and ability to act against violence in her home and world.

- UN Expert Group on Women and Finance

"For many years now, I have been impressed by the power of a simple, small loan to those for whom fate and circumstance have resulted in disadvantage. Maintaining peoples integrity and showing them trust, whilst facilitating a way for them to rebuild their own lives is such a meaningful way of alleviating poverty. By placing microfinance in the global spotlight, awareness of this most effective anti-poverty tool will undoubtedly, and thankfully, increase."

-Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah
of the Hashemite Kingdom of JordanEmissary

"Microcredit is about giving hope. When you're talking about making loans to women whose income is less than $1 a day, you can easily make the leap to see what a microloan can make possible. The women I've met in Uganda and Guatemala are so resourceful, and it's just amazing to see how, with their courage and diligence, they create small businesses with such tiny amounts of money. These women work so hard, and they manage to pay off their loans, and the first thing they do is educate and feed their kids. It's amazing that the world is not investing more in this resource."

-Natalie Portman
ActressSpokesperson for the International
Year of Microcredit 2005
FINCA International Ambassador of Hope

Microfinance Statistics

• An eight-year World Bank study in Bangladesh found that 48 per cent of the poorest households with access to microcredit loans rose above the poverty line.
  
• Opportunity International had loans out to over 675,000 poor clients at the end of 2004, and 98 per cent of all repayments in the year were made on time or within 30 days. It estimated that more than 1.2 million jobs were created or sustained from these loans, which were provided at market interest rates.
  
• In 2007, World Vision is reported as serving more than 445,000 clients in over 45 different countries impacting the lives of nearly 1,000,000 children and creating over 400,000 new jobs.
  
• Five (5) per cent of clients graduated out of poverty each year by participating in microfinance programmes, according to a study on Grameen Bank by Shahidur Khandker. More importantly, households were able to sustain these gains over time.
  
• Microfinance programmes from different regions report increasing decision-making roles of women clients, according to the research of Susy Cheston and Lisa Kuhn. For example, the Women's Empowerment Program in Nepal found that 68 per cent of its members were making decisions on buying and selling property, sending their daughters to school, negotiating their children's marriages, and planning their family.
  
• Becoming a microfinance client has led to increased self-confidence in women and improved status within the community, according to results of Freedom from Hunger studies in Bolivia and Ghana. Participants in Ghana played a more active role in community life and community ceremonies, while participants in Bolivia were actively involved in local government.