The Brownies of Pack A learned about microfinance this week - they heard the true story of how One Hen made a difference to a family, a village, a town and a whole country.
They then played a role playing game where they learned how people need to support each other when they are taking on the responsibility of small loans.
For the final part of the meeting each Six was given some money (not physically!) and chose who they would lend it to from a list of 6 people currently applying for microloans through Lend With Care - a British organisation that manages microloans to people in need all over the world. An important point to note is that recipients of loans through Lend With Care pay zero interest.
Each Six now have their own Lend With Care account (managed by Eagle Owl). They decided to loan their money to a lady in the Philippines and a lady from the entrepreneurial M'bobo group in Malawi. Both women were hoping to secure loans to buy more products for their shops to increase their profits.
The lady in the Philippines hopes to be able to send her children to the highest level of education possible and the lady in Malawi wants to eventually be able to buy a plot of land for her children.
Some reasons the girls gave for lending money to these two women were that they both promised to pay back their loans quite quickly (4 and 6 months), they both work very hard already and they felt their loan would be secure [Note: Eagle Owl has been using Lend With Care to make small loans for 4 years and not one single person has ever defaulted].
It is our hope that the Brownies can experience the satisfaction of seeing their money circulate over the months and years to come and watch how it helps more and more people help themselves towards a better life.
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