Mali and Burkina Faso are two of the world’s four least-developed nations. Women, considered subordinate to men, are rarely literate or property owners, which keeps them beyond the reach of traditional lending institutions.

This Initiative will help women become financially self-sufficient. Women will form groups and pool their savings, which will be used to loan money to individual group members. With loans, hundreds of thousands of women and their family members will improve their living conditions. Women in savings groups also will learn how community problems such as malaria, HIV, illiteracy and discrimination worsen poverty.

Strømme Foundation, a Kristiansand, Norway-based nongovernmental relief and development organization, has already helped 20,000 Malian women form savings groups and move toward self-sufficiency.

By partnering with international agencies and community-based organizations, Strømme will expand its work in Mali and enter neighboring Burkina Faso.

This investment will measurably improve the lives of 106,875 impoverished women and 320,625 of their family members.

Initiative Profile »

Most Malians and Burkinabes survive amid grinding poverty, dependent on subsistence agriculture and plagued by recurring drought. Easily preventable diseases such as malaria are common. In Burkina Faso, for example, malaria, respiratory infections and AIDS-related illnesses are the three leading causes of death.

Except during harvest season, few people in Mali or Burkina Faso have regular income. Most women lack an interest-earning place to save their money beyond the reach of other family members.

With few legitimate opportunities to earn money, many women and girls, some as young as 12, turn to prostitution for survival income.

One-quarter of Malian girls, but only 7 percent of boys, are sexually active by age 15, reflecting the number of girls turning to prostitution, according to the World Health Organization. Pregnancies only tighten poverty’s grip on families.

In this Initiative, women will be organized into self-help groups to save and lend funds to each other. They will be trained on how to borrow money from local, formal financial institutions as their needs for additional capital and financial services grow. Providers of financial services will be identified and links will be established between the institutions and the savings groups.

West Africa in Focus »

Working with an experienced organization such as Strømme Foundation will help ensure the success of this Initiative. Strømme has a proven track record of working with local community-based organizations in the design, implementation and evaluation of grass-roots education and microfinance projects. This Initiative dovetails with another Geneva Global Initiative that educates children in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger; financial stability helps families continue to support their children’s education.

Effective economic empowerment projects have helped at least 29,000

Malian women, beginning in April 2005, when Strømme created 1,356 savings groups. By October 2006, those women had saved $218,872, of which 83 percent was loaned to members. By working through savings groups, Strømme taught more than 90 percent of the women how to prevent malaria, which causes 17 percent of Malian children’s deaths.

In this Initiative, at least 75 percent of the women will buy and use insecticide-treated mosquito nets to protect their families from malaria, and many will learn to read and write in their local language to help them lift themselves out of poverty.

Nassa Chrisitne, an orphan in Saonré, Burkina Faso, says, “I’ve been struggling to keep my brothers and sisters alive since our mom and dad died of AIDS. Until [a Burkinabe organization funded through Geneva Global] came to our village, I didn’t have much hope for our future. Now I’m beginning to think we might be able to survive. Thank you for providing rice for us when we had nothing to eat. I’m anxious to finish my reading lessons. I can’t believe I have such a great opportunity. I’m going to work hard at learning how to raise chickens to provide for our family.”