When Leonora Calipay’s children finished school and she came home to the Philippines, she knew there was something more to her life than retirement.
Leonora’s neighbor noticed her desire to do meaningful things in her free time, so she taught Leonora to sew rugs. With this new skill, Leonora started her own small rugmaking business. She hoped to empower her neighbors—especially the single mothers in her community—to make a living through the same craft.
Before joining a HOPE Burundi savings group in 2016, Isaac Nduwayezu lived as an outsider, relying on his hunting skills and talismans from his father, a witch doctor.
Raised a hunter in a village that saw hunting as archaic, Isaac was forced to carry home communal rejection and shame with each capture. Continue Reading…
On Giving Tuesday, we want to elevate other organizations doing life-changing work across our country and around the world. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Labour Organization predicted that 1.6 billion jobs on the margins of the world economy—representing half the world’s workforce—were in immediate danger. Lower-wage workers and minorities, as well as members of the informal economy, are particularly at risk—but these five organizations are stepping in, and they have our wholehearted endorsement. Continue Reading…
Leya Mshani lives in Chitipa, a district in northern Malawi, with her husband and children.
A year ago, Leya and her nearby neighbors each spent around 35 hours per week—the equivalent of a full-time job in the U.S.—collecting water for their families.
When friends invited her to join Ungweru (“light”) savings group through their church (a HOPE partner), Leya started saving 500 kwacha (roughly 67¢ USD) at each group meeting.
As she paid her shares, she used her first loan from the group to take an intensive tailoring course in order to pursue her dream of becoming a seamstress. Over the next two years, Leya used funds from her savings, loans, and profits to start a sewing business, make home improvements, purchase livestock, support her husband in starting a taxi business, and teach other women how to sew to earn income. Continue Reading…
Susan Jones was skilled, capable, and motivated—yet, month after month, she struggled to find a job following her college graduation.
“I was born blind,” she explains. “It’s not easy; … [when I graduated in the 70s,] not that many people [were] willing to give a blind person a job.” Continue Reading…
In the seven years since Peter Greer and Phil Smith released The Poor Will Be Glad, HOPE has learned a lot about working with families in underserved communities to help them flourish. Peter and Phil have updated their book, retitled Created to Flourish, and we’d like to share these valuable learnings with you. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 4 about the power of jobs in fighting poverty.
When we engage in employment-based solutions, the benefits of employment extend to future generations. Outside a small office in Trou-du-Nord, Haiti, I saw several boys with homemade kites. Using a plastic bag, some string, and a few sticks, these three boys constructed kites capable of expertly navigating tangled power lines and two-story buildings. I could see other kids watching and learning from their example. Other children saw what was possible, and there grew a prestige factor in who could get his kite the highest.
In the same way, I’ve seen community members improve their lives, motivating other community members to action through their hard work. If my neighbors can pull their families out of poverty, why can’t I? Essentially, they are pushing the limits of what is possible, and from very little they are making kites that can fly higher and higher.
Employment decreases the need for never-ending support. Continue Reading…
