Success Stories from Our Members in the field

Training Women in Business in the Congo, Pact and Bread for the World

As a vendor selling dried fish in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colette Kayakes was struggling. Her husband, a trained electrician, had been without steady pay for 20 months. The family paid $20 a month – the equivalent of 10 days of Collette’s pay -- to use a distant water pump. Collette could neither read nor write, and could not manage her business efficiently enough to support her family, which included her own children and young cousins whose parents had died of AIDS.

Then Collette began attending meetings of a women’s program called WORTH, run by Pact and advocated by Bread for the World and financed by USAID. The program gives women entrepreneurs lessons in literacy, banking and business skills. Initially launched in Nepal, the program has expanded through out the developing world. There are currently 200 groups in Congo alone.

The women learn how to manage loans, and set up and manage their own banks within the group. Each woman makes a minimal contribution to the bank to get started, so the money is all their own.

Collette learned to read, write, and manage her earnings, and quickly doubled her income. She saved enough to buy a bicycle to better travel outside the city to cultivate crops for her family.

The WORTH program would not be possible without funds from the U.S. government. Bread for the World continues to press Congress to keep President Bush’s promise to double development assistance, so that more women like Colette can take charge of their lives.