New Horizons > June 1999

Meet ECLOF Clients

“ECLOF provided me with a ray of hope.”, Sketiwe Chinosiyani told participants at the World Council of Churches Eighth Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe last December.

Sketiwe is only 25 but has already had a difficult life. She is a single parent and, despite attending secretarial college, was unable to find a job.

Sketiwe told her story at one of the ECLOF Padare events during the Assembly. She said her mother is ‘a born business woman’ who sells vegetables and other farm produce. Inspired by this, Sketiwe began to sell ready-made clothes but found it did not generate enough income.

Her mother then told her about ECLOF Zimbabwe. Sketiwe and five others formed an enterprise group. One man makes and sells bricks, another makes clothes, two make and sell knitwear and another plus Sketiwe are involved in the retail trade. Sketiwe is also treasurer of the group. With an ECLOF loan of around US$1000 (US$ 166.60 each), the six have prospered. They have paid back the loan and also saved an amount each month for future expansion. “We were not considered credit worthy.”, says Sketiwe, “No commercial bank would have trusted us with credit. Even though this has been micro credit it has given us a ray of hope”.

She also told the Padare session, “The poor need capital not charity. If there are people to trust us when we are still poor and lend us capital then we can have a better life. We do not have to sit and wait for someone to employ us. Now I am more confident and look to my future with hope”.

The ‘scent’ of collective and community success
Colombian Community Mothers and Families benefit from ECLOF Loan

Five women in Colombia have each expan-ded their small-scale businesses thanks to a US$3,270 ECLOF loan.

Gloria Peña and Teresa de Jesus Cabezas operate small-scale, affordable community markets from their homes. Fabiola Ramos and Carmelina Quilindo run home deliv-ery hot lunch services, and Libia Terreros makes air fresheners and waxes with home made scents.

These micro entrepreneurs are heads of their households and well known for their work within the group known as Community Mothers in the Cauca Valley in south west Colombia. The families of all the women are also involved in the enterprises. As Community Mothers, the five work together as a solidarity collective in line with the policy of the COFEP (ECLOF Colombia) Solidarity Collective Programme (SCP). The programme is based on the belief that real development comes when socio-economic changes affect groups rather than only individuals. The SCP model of solidarity collectives is people-based and participatory. The aims are to increase standards of living by stabilising income and to improve the quality of life in a community. Solidarity collectives within the SCP consist of groups of three to six families who share a similar social, professional, cultural, political and spiritual background. They must also have some experience in self-help and self-reliance undertakings.

Each collective appoints a leader, who is always a loan graduate from another collective and responsible for training other members in financial planning, loan re-payment, interest rates and other matters connected to the ECLOF loan.

The collective as a whole receives the loan, which is divided up among the members according to their need and ability to repay. The members sign for the loan joint-ly and in addition agree, for example, to repay one member’s part of the loan if that person is unable to do so because of illness or death. The solidarity guarantee serves therefore as a form of insurance. After the group loan is repaid the members of the collective themselves become loan graduates and can then each form another collective with other members from the community. The Solidarity Collective Programme is flexible enough to serve as a tool for low-income earners who wish to work together to combat unemployment. It enables mem-bers to achieve identity and dignity through taking part in significant decision-making processes related to the well-being of themselves plus other members of the collective and their families, and also the wider community in which they live. During 1997, the SCP benefited around 250 small-scale enterprises; last year the figure increased to around 300, including the Community Mothers of Colombia’s Cauca Valley whose food and scent businesses, thanks to ECLOF, exude the sweet smell of collective success.