unlimited partnership e.V.

When we first implemented the Micro-Finance Project in September 2011 we distributed loans to 46 women with a loan seize of 35-50 Euros. At that time we had two major goals in mind. Firstly, we were hoping that most women would repay their loans on a regular basis in order to see those women dedication to our project. Secondly, we were hoping that in the long term that at some point the women will be able to have enough income and an understanding of the necessity to support basic education for their children.
Now, in early 2014 we are able to evaluate the project a little bit for the first time.
By now, 63 women under are benefiting from our development program. At first it might not seem a high increase of beneficiaries, however taking into consideration that every woman supports an “extended family” beyond her children and husband (i. e. parents, mother and father in law, aunties, children of relatives and cousins) raised the number of people benefiting from our Micro-Finance Scheme significantly. By now tall the children of our women are attending schools, including girls. Furthermore, they have a 100% track record of repaying the loans. During difficult times such as times of famine, our program is the only hope the women hold on to. Beyond that it filled us with joy that by early 2014 all the women in our program are also successfully attending adults literacy classes.

All the profits of our Micro-Finance project have been reinvested in the community of Telu, which we seek to develop. In other words we renovated a bakery which was ran down and by now every week another group of women is in charge of baking bread that is sold at the village. This project, which was fully funded by the repaid loans plus its interest rate, provides the women with an additional income to support their extended families.
It took us time to establish mutual trust, however we reached far beyond that to the point where UnlimitedPartnership is perceived as part of extended family in the village. “Development takes time”, these were very wise words from our local partner Mr. Musa S. Bainda when we started the project. At this point of time we as an organization understand the meaning of it. Therefore we are fully committed to the project and contemplate about ideas of how to develop Telu’s community further and how to duplicate our success elsewhere.
Our upcoming ideas include social enterprises, which could be potential new projects not only for the people of Telu and our women there but also for Sierra Leone as a country. We plan to go step by step as we did with Micro-Finance and see where this project might lead us. According to our local partner Mr. Musa Bainda it would be a wonderful idea.