18 year old Ellen Chilemba’s inspiring entrepreneurship rose to the spotlight after Humans of New York (HONY) featured her street portrait on their Facebook page. HONY fans were directed to Tiwale, a program founded by Chilemba that empowers young Malawian women to end the cycle of poverty by providing leadership training and support through microfinance. The program offers a week of workshops and discussion on entrepreneurship and the basic skills required to start and run a successful business. Alongside this, Tiwale also offers a ‘self-development program’ that mobilises the women to view their lives in a more positive way. At the end of this the, the women are put into teams and given the challenge of producing a business plan. Those who present the best business plan are awarded start-up capital, which is repaid in small, interest-free installations.
These women come from poor, impoverished communities, where the risk of dropping out of school early is imminent, if not definitive. This poverty often drives them to early marriage or prostitution and therefore most of the women when starting the program are jobless and idle. Seeing beyond their current context, Tiwale nurses these women’s ideas and thoughts on ways to lift themselves out of poverty. Rather than just providing financial support, Tiwale successfully challenges the context that these women have been given. Instead, these young women leave with greater confidence in themselves and their ideas, and have gone on to lead successful businesses beyond even Tiwale’s expectations.
Click here to find out more about Tiwale’s work with young women in Malawi.
Image from the Tiwale Facebook page.
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