Wednesday, 8 February 2012Each week, several dozen women gather at a house in Diyarbakir to socialise about the neighbourhood, child rearing, respecting elders -- and as women entrepreneurs, finance.
Plagued by poverty, high unemployment and low female labour participation rates, cities like Diyarbakir are benefiting from microfinance projects, which grant small, low-interest loans to women without collateral, in order to start businesses of their own.
The programme benefits women like Zarife Yalcin, who started with a 500 TL loan and is now knitting at home and making a profit selling her goods. "My children can go to school now," she says.
Others, like Ayse Hamzaogullari, started small like Yalcin but have grown their businesses to the point of running their own clothing stores. She has also founded a group of women who support each other, each of which has about half a dozen subgroups.
"Everybody can start slowly and benefit from this. I also started small, received 500, then 900 and then I managed to receive 3000 TL," she explained, adding that her store alone employs four women. "It is good to open a door for people to earn bread money," she added.
Although the credits are only offered to women, Diyarbakýr Regional Area Director Mehmet Ay explains that they are actually family loans because unemployed husbands also contribute to the business.
"The credit is offered to women because they are pushed to the background, especially in the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey," he explains.
Development research shows that compared to men, women tend to spend money on both female and male children's health and education, resulting in additional benefits to family and society.
"Before in the agricultural society it was like this: the women worked but the men were the ones who always had the capital. But now the women get some money in their hands," Ay says.
The women open a variety of businesses, from handicrafts to catering and hairdressing to transportation. Most start with handicrafts; some set up home offices and more successful ones open stores.
According to Ay, it is "against the philosophy of microcredits" to dictate to the women what business to run. Instead, they consult with women on the path they choose or help them find buyers for their products.
Ay underlines the programme has a success rate of 100%. Every credit offered was returned even if the entrepreneur went bankrupt. Special arrangements are made with those women to repay their debt, even if only 1-5 TL a week.
What makes the programme successful is that the women in groups guarantee each other, providing both empowerment and a social incentive to pay back loans.
Selma Keles, who moved to Diyarbakir from Antalya, wanted to open a tailoring store but she did not have enough money. "I went to a gathering, told them 'I do not know you, you do not know me, but I want to open a store and I need money,'" she explains. "All of them said they would to be a guarantor for me since there would be a store; not one of them said they wouldn't. They did not know me at all."
Women entrepreneurs need to learn to stand on their own two feet, Ay says, and that is why the help is limited. The goal of the programme is to transform it into a bank owned by women, like in Bangladesh, where the first microfinance project was developed by Muhammed Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank.
The first microfinance project in Turkey was implemented in 2003 with six women. Now there are 85 offices in 70 provinces with 54,000 members. In Diyarbakir, there are six offices and 10,000 members.
The offices are financed by donations from individuals, foundations, banks, some municipalities and funds provided in scope of the Law for Provincial Special Administrations.
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Wednesday, 8 February 2012
SETimes
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