First Step Initiative banks on poor Congolese poor women through microfinance
February 22nd, 2008 | Published in Blogosphere, Business and Entrepreneurship
“For every woman we reached, the impact was six folds because a typical Congolese family comprises of six children.â€
Chingwell Mutombu a Minnesota-based Congolese philanthropic consultant talks about First Step Initiative, her microfinance project for women and mothers in Democratic Republic of Congo:
“A lot of people look at poor people as being “unbankable†but the interesting thing is that once they are given the chance, they always pay back. To them, this is their life savings. They would not jeopardize the opportunity to better their lives and improve the conditions of their families…We are overwhelmed… the demand is great but we can only serve a few hundreds people because of our limited resources. Some times I wonder if we should be giving people hope if it is only 100 we can help at a time. At the same time I know that for every journey one has to start somewhere and the hope is that it will continue to grow…”
