I spent the day on a field visit with Jamii Bora. If anyone doubts that micro-credit can work in an African context, then save up your plane fair and make your way to Kenya!
A project started by a retired Ingrid Munro and 50 determined street beggars now boasts loans of over 300 billion Kenyan Shillings (do your own currency conversions!). But I am less interested in the statistics than the human stories I witnessed today.
There is Wilson Minor, a former thug who seems to have specialized in muggings. His logic was that he would not wait to die from hunger, which is slow and painful. A bullet is much faster so if the police caught him then one shot would save him from a prolonged death. After 18 micro-loans, he now has a few businesses under his belt, lives in a beautiful house and about to purchase a car with the help of Jamii Bora. He is an articulate speaker who now also has experience speaking internationally. This is but one of about 20 inspiring stories/visits experienced today!
I am fascinated by the names of slums being borrowed from other parts of the world and their related history. Kosovo slum was named as such because of the land grab when the location came up around 1990. We also spent time in Soweto, named after the South African township. It also happens to be more developed than Kosovo :o)
An unedited video clip of Mary’s story:
Mary & her chicken heads from Lesley Williams on Vimeo.
extraordinary reporting lesley; begin to see why microcreditsummit’s loyalest supporter Queen Sofia of Spain has asked microcreditsummit leaders to spend next 18 months seeing which microcredits round the world want to action learn with jamii bora; great to see Africa setting an example the world needs to follow up
How interesting! Don’t know too much about microcredit, but what I do know is that it’s fantastic for small business in underdeveloped countries. I think what also helps is simplified business entities, like the CCs we have here in SA which are now unfortunately being done away with. Keep the updates coming!
Looking forward to more updates..more pictures too
What a great story this is, imagine i live in kenya and i have never visited the slums, looking foward to going there someday,
i have been to Soweto though, but could not see any worse scenes than here
enjoy ur day