Could a program that was developed to help lift African women out of extreme poverty also help lift America's long-term unemployed back into the workforce?
Seven years ago, Torkin Wakefield, a psychologist from Colorado, who was in Uganda with her husband, an AIDS doctor, was walking through a slum area when she noticed a woman sitting on the side of the road rolling bits of paper trash into beads for a necklace. She bought one. The next day, she returned and bought some more. "She was turning trash into something beautiful," says Torkin. "When I asked her about them, she told me that she had over 400 necklaces but no one to sell them to, and that there were 30 women in the village who also made similar beads."
Torkin had been touring Uganda thinking about setting up an orphanage somewhere in the country. Instead she decided to meet with the women. "At the meeting, 30 women and 75 children came toward us singing and dancing. They asked us to sing songs from our culture, and so we did. " What emerged from this joyful meeting was an organization that has lifted more than 1,000 women from $1 a day wages in the stone quarry to $8 a day as bead makers, and ultimately micro entrepreneurs.
Although there is no clock hanging on the wall, each of the 300 women currently participating in the BeadforLife program knows that she has only 18 months to produce enough jewelry to make a financial transition from bead making to life as a micro-entrepreneur.
As each woman learns how to make the beads, they are also learning how to become entrepreneurs. Each month they are paid $240 a month for the jewelry they make, and the money is placed into a savings account in their name. They can withdraw money at any time for family needs such as school fees for their children, health care and food.
The jewelry is then sent to the BeadforLife nonprofit organization in Boulder, Colorado. From there it is repackaged and sent out to 100 volunteers nationwide who host house parties for the sale of the jewelry. Ninety percent of the money is returned to the women.
Over the 18 months, they will be given training in literacy, and basic business skills such as record keeping, location scouting, and inventory management. As their savings account grows, they are counseled on various types of micro enterprise they might want to start.
Their accumulated funds might go to buy a flock of chickens, or a sewing machine, or cook stove for a small restaurant or refreshment stand. As they pass the one-year mark, a portion of their savings is automatically set aside for the day they will leave the program and start their own business. Surplus funds might go toward a down payment on a small house. The remaining loan is paid off from profits from their small business.
Recently, BeadforLife invested in land in Uganda and trained local villagers how to build simple homes. Over 132 homes were built, and some of the 1,000 women who have gone through the program now live there with their families. Over 350 of their children are now enrolled in school.
New projects include support for women farmers in northern Uganda to grow beans and make shea butter for export to a world market. And, curriculum materials for teachers on the topic of extreme poverty and how students can make a difference. To date, more than 2,000 teachers in the U.S. have downloaded the curriculum.
Could this model of wrap-around employment linked to business skills development work for America's long-term unemployed?
At the local level, for example, the unemployed who chose to enroll in a micro entrepreneur program could select from several hands on occupations. It might include working in rural areas, on farms, to learn how to grow food for local stores restaurants, and farmer's markets; or building weatherization products for home purchase and use.
Like their African counterparts, those who chose the route of the micro entrepreneur, would be given a wrap-around 18 months training in business skills development, marketing materials, and a booth to test out their business at a local farmer's market, or business to business fair.
Each year small businesses in America generate 80 percent of the new jobs. Add in support for the micro entrepreneur, and the U.S. may be able to erase those long job lines. Over time, a project begun in a small village in rural Africa could provide long-term hope for Americans who have lost hope of ever finding work again.
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Further, to continue to preach that the problem with the unemployed is "linked to business skills development" is to continue to let corporations (and their $trillion cash horde) get away with the destruction of the Middle Class.
My bigger concern is debating how much/what kind of support to give a start-up while letting the corporations that outsource jobs continue to be rewarded for their behaviour. So long as people blindly accept that small business must replace those jobs there will never be enough jobs for everyone.
And, I certainly could have used "wrap-around support" over the past 18 months.
You know what programs like that are? They're ways for some white, upper middle class folks to feel good about themselves. Whether they're buying the beads made of garbage or *lending with interest* a whole $50 or whatever to some woman who's willing to do such silly work, it's not at all about lifting anyone from poverty ... it's about making the well off feel good about being well off. "Look! I have a garbage bracelet! Isn't it beautiful, and aren't I very generous/noble/forward thinking for having bought it? Oh, oh, oh, AND, as if that weren't enough, I gave a whole $20 to the Garbage Bead Loan Company! They're so generous, they only charge 50% interest. Sigh, I'm so very special."
No, making the US even more like other third world countries will NOT solve our problems ... which is mainly having too many who don't pay their fair share. That's the problem and that is what must be fixed.
And I'll tell you something else. I know you're well intentioned, but you know what they say about good intentions ... and what you're essentially saying is that American workers should consider being even more like a third world country than we actually are (and we're pretty close). Do you, in any way, see how damaging that would be? If you were to couple your good intentions with some critical thinking, you would understand what I mean.
Without any real form of financial tracking, people take on and juggle a number of loans more often than not to help pay off the other loans.
It requires all of the women to take on risk without really solving their more basic problems.
The argument for microfinance is that if you lend a person 100 dollars at interest rates anything from 22% to 100%, they are miraculously pulled out of poverty and able to start a small business that has a return of anything up to 3000%. The reality is, most small business start-ups fail in the western world and microfinanced small business in the third world are no exception, the difference is they now have a debt that they are unable to pay back.
How do I know? I work in this field and have done for the past twelve years. I am in Pakistan building 35,000 shelters with enterprise options thrown in for good measure. I see what happens. Microfinance is not solving the problem, it merely offers an illusion of poverty reduction and talking about the 2 or 3 percent success stories is not helping the situation at all, just increasing the illusion.