In the early 1990s, after returning from Europe to her native Tunisia, Essma Ben Hamida felt it a revelation to notice something that had always been part of her world: When she walked through the poor neighborhoods of Tunis, there were very few women who had a business.
As the co-founder of Enda Inter-Arabe, a non-governmental organization promoting vocational training for school drop-outs and health orientation for women, Essma met regularly with small groups of women to learn their views and see how best to serve them. In one of these Enda discussion circles, Essma asked the women if they were busy. In unison, they said no. They explained that they were occupied caring for their families, but could not work because they had no capital.
The women’s response carried Essma back to scenes of her family home. Growing up in Kairouan, Essma observed how non-salaried working women like her mother didn’t have access to money.
“The women were always dependent on their fathers or husbands to give them money for housekeeping. This situation struck me as almost a form of begging,” she remembers. Many women spent all their time inside the house sewing or making carpets that were sold to male vendors who came to the door and exploited the women, paying very low prices. Women were not allowed to go to the market and sell their products themselves, so they had no idea of the prices.
“Maybe this image remained and became the detonator for the microcredit project,” she recalls.
'Many of these people can work'
Later, in a poor neighborhood, Hay Ettadhamen, Enda was invited by the Red Crescent to provide a list of very poor people to receive food basket handouts during the holy month of fasting, Ramadan. But those who were not on the lists remained empty-handed and stayed there, pleading to be served. “They have become used to charity, yet many of these people can work,” she thought.
Those encounters sparked her decision to create a microcredit program that would allow the poor to gain access to capital to create and develop their own sources of income through tiny businesses. “From the beginning, we thought of the idea of empowering low-income people, and especially women, and giving them dignity.”
Essma was also spurred on by what she’d seen in her career as the first Tunisian journalist at the United Nations in New York, and later reporting from Rome on poverty programs of the FAO and IFAD. “The difference between what was said in conferences and what I saw in the field made me feel there had been very little done in concrete terms to take people out of poverty,” she says. “I wondered if self-help through microcredit was not a viable solution.”
With her husband, Michael Cracknell, Essma began learning about microcredit through exchange visits with backing from the Ford Foundation in Cairo. In 1995, with just $20,000 obtained from a French NGO, Emmaüs International, Essma and Michael launched a microcredit program that provided very small loans to poor women, backed by group guarantees for repayment.
'It’s a revolution'
Today, Essma is executive director of Enda Inter-Arabe, which has a full-time staff of 750 and manages a loan portfolio of more than $55 million, serving 148,000 active borrowers. Nearly three in four clients are women. In early 2010, the institution was ranked by the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) as number 21 among the best-performing MFIs in the world.
While originally only women could apply for loans, the clients changed that. In one client circle discussion, women were asked whether Enda should provide loans to men as well. The women replied yes: “The men requesting loans from Enda are our husbands, sons or brothers, very often unemployed, and will definitely need access to capital to start their own businesses.”
Enda began lending to men, on condition that their wives, known clients, would guarantee their loans. This procedure was not easily accepted by the male clients, but soon it became a normal fact of life for men and women to guarantee one another.
Sometimes, women clients succeeded in creating a business for their sons or husbands who were sitting idle in the café waiting for a job. Today, several of the activities financed by Enda’s loans are becoming family businesses. After lending was introduced in rural areas, loans to men increased. Now 27 percent of clients are males and loans for agriculture and livestock comprise 25 percent of the portfolio.
When clients come to Enda branches to pay back their loans, men and women make use of the waiting time, usually quite short, to exchange experiences and sometimes even to work together. “It’s a revolution, men and women working side-by-side and making deals,” says Essma, recalling that by tradition, women are not allowed to go to the cafés – men’s exclusive space and often where they develop their contacts.
Along with loans, Enda provides a range of services designed to empower women and develop the skills of microentrepreneurs. The discussion circles allow women to obtain information and to exchange experiences. This gives them confidence, and the meetings also allow them to raise their sights by listening to talks by specialists on topics that include taxes, social security, HIV/AIDS prevention, women’s rights, citizenship, family and the environment.
Marketing and training in new skills are the most important of the business development services (BDS) provided by Enda and its partners such as the government employment office, allowing women to sell more, improve the quality of their products and launch new ones. Enda organizes sales at branch offices and at public trade fairs as outlets for clients’ products, ranging from traditional woven pillows, curtains, woolen carpets and blankets, to pottery and designer clothes and purses. “In fact,” says Essma, “even if some of them sell little or nothing, they learn a lot about prices, quality and sales techniques – and they network.”
With support from government agencies that promote employment and exports, Enda also organizes training in new skills, such as how to make drapes, candles or pastries. Specialized consultants work with the most promising entrepreneurs to create business plans and develop financial literacy. Women who cannot read or write are directed to literacy classes, also offered by the government.
'Women will get what they need'
The positive value of BDS clearly shows, “…in improved product quality, a more dynamic attitude at fairs, empowerment through greater knowledge of their rights, better management in general, and financial management in particular,” Essma explains. A recent study commissioned by Enda finds that Enda’s BDS and skills training lead to higher incomes for clients.
While Enda recycles nearly all its profits into the loan portfolio, it dedicates 10 percent to finance the BDS activities. A small contribution is requested from participants, in accord with the French saying, “If it’s free, it’s worthless.” Enda plans to expand business services by assigning one staff person, the client adviser, to each of the 60 branches to coordinate client services. These coordinators are to be charged with hearing client comments and complaints, trying to solve any problems, discussing needs for new financial products, and referring clients to BDS programs.
It’s a costly proposition, but it's in line with Enda’s philosophy that most microentrepreneurs need a whole range of services, not just money. “What we are doing is opening minds. Women will get what they need, such as marketing skills or literacy classes. Some of the women need it all," she says.Two years ago, Enda began offering financial education, teaching clients about budgeting, saving, avoiding over-indebtedness and negotiating.
Today, when Essma visits poor neighborhoods and rural areas, she sees women outdoors, conducting business in public or standing behind counters in shops or market stalls. Though she’s proud of these achievements, she’s saddened to see that most of Enda’s women clients are now wearing headscarves, even though Tunisia has been a progressive Muslim country since its independence in 1956. The trend makes her feel that perhaps her work for women’s freedom and empowerment is running against the current.
The number of women who work and are borrowing from Enda continues to increase. “One of the objectives for me with microfinance is to change the mindset from charity to counting on your own resources – for men and women alike,” says Essma. “This involves opening up women’s minds to micro-business, and men’s minds to accepting that their wives and daughters can run a business and contribute to the family and the country’s economy.”
