KWIHEED (Kongadzem Women's Initiative for Health, Education and Economic Development) in Cameroon, West Africa.

KWIHEED has lent money to 4,000 women. They borrow $50 at 15% interest to be paid back in eight months for projects such as selling farm produce, buying something cheap in a "bush market" and selling it at a profit at larger markets in towns and other villages, and setting up fish tanks in order to raise and sell fish. At home, they manage to put food on the table, clothe and nurture their children and meet costs of school fees and health care.

Kaah Anester with 100 kilo bag of beans in a market store room. She belongs to a borrowing group in the village of Ngashie Oku. She has raised 5 bags this year -- 2 for family consumption and 3 for sale. She sells these beans by the bucket in the weekly market, retaining some for late season sales when they will bring a higher price. (Women carry out all the tasks of farming -- tilling, planting, weeding and harvesting -- in North West Province.)

"At the beginning, everyone said I was a fool, cooking with one hand and kneading with the other in my own apartment," says baker Armen Gasparyan. He now employs 22 people in Taldykorgan and has moved his operation into part of a closed sewing factory. He first heard about KCLF from one of the enterprise agents in his area while he was in town selling agricultural commodities. In two years he has received nine loans, graduating from $200 to $3,000. His family members have been bakers for generations, and he is obsessed with quality. To this day, his sister travels to northern Kazakhstan to purchase flour that Gasparyan is convinced gives them an advantage. "The most important thing is quality, and now the Almaty market is coming here, since we can deliver a high-quality product for less." They now provide baked goods to 43 stores and have distribution contracts with 12 supermarket chains.

The Kazakhstan Community Loan Fund has been operating since 1997, implementing a well-constructed, group lending strategy to service providers, traders, manufacturers and home based-businesses. It serves 3,500 clients. The most recent annual report states an average loan size of $247 over 20,000 loans made. Repayment rate is 98% and the average portfolio growth for the year was 76%. In addition to our grant, other grants have been obtained from the Eurasia Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture, and the HIVOS Fund in the Netherlands

A multi dimensional project in Viet Nam sponsored by Oxfam is struggling to attain recovery of the mangrove forests which were sprayed with herbicides and defoliants from 1966 to 1970 by the United States Air Force. The Management Board for Protection of Forest and Environment has invited willing citizens to restore the forests by offering land in exchange for their services. They have replanted eleven thousand acres of forest. Wild animals such as monkeys, wild boars, pythons, otters, and various kinds of birds have returned, and 1253 species of flora and 200 species of fauna are thriving once again.

Unfortunately, the transaction of exchange of land for labor does not yield a living income for the families. Twenty-five percent of the families living in the forests are classified as very poor and urgently in need of additional income generating activities.

The families, who have an income of $207 per year, must be recommended by neighbors, recognized by a loan committee, and they must agree to send their children to school. Oxfam America has established a credit program which will supplement income from restoring the forests through work in fisheries, orchards, and livestock rearing. They also support training of aquaculture techniques and water management, thereby supporting families living in extreme poverty while simultaneously addressing serious ecological concerns, largely created through activities of our own government.

This program marks an extension of our Companions in Jubilee program into Asia, and for the first time allows us to support ecological restoration, all the more meaningful because we have contributed to the problem.

As much as most of us love ice cream, we don't often associate the Episcopal Church and the ice cream business. On the other hand, there is no dominion which Christ does not enter. In the Dominican Republic, the Iglesia Episcopal Dominicana sponsors a microenterprise project (Comite de Microempresa) that lends money to women to build, among other things, a home made ice cream business. This Committee recently met to make awards to eleven applicants, after receiving the $10,000 grant from the Companions in Jubilee. Most of the applicants were members of the church, but there were three from the community whose applications were also approved. All applications must be sponsored by a parish priest, or some established business person. The projects must be well planned, and have access to a good location. Other business projects include selling shoes, perfumes, dinners, and breakfasts. The sale of food occurs in a different scenario from what we envision at home. People often do not have the opportunity to sit down at a table as a family. For one thing, they may not have a table, or chairs. They are likely to catch a meal on the fly, in a different version of "fast food." There may be a food salesperson running

Margaret was twelve when she was raped by her stepfather, and she gave birth to a baby boy. Her family lived in a house by the Nairobi River. When El Nino caused a flood, their house was washed away. Margaret and her baby boy and three brothers went to live with Muhami. Mujami is a widow. Her husband was killed at age 27 in an “accident.” Her son had died at the age of 11. Though he spent the last month of his life in the hospital, he was never given a diagnosis. At the time, no one spoke of AIDS, but now Muhami strongly suspects he might have died of AIDS.

Mujami opened her home to Margaret and her baby and her brothers. Margaret’s mother comes to see them every day. Mujami has arranged for Margaret to get some training as a housekeeper, so she can earn enough to feed herself and her baby, now three years old. Only recently has she named her baby Henry, after the father of an American friend of Mujami’s. Recently Margaret has been diagnosed as HIV positive.

In these desperate circumstances, there is some good news. The church has offered financial support so Margaret’s mother can rebuild her house. Margaret’s step father, who drank, beat his wife and broke her leg, is now in jail. The church intervened to assure the end of his abuse

In March of this year, Saint Thomas Episcopal church in Hanover sent ten people ranging in age from sixteen to sixty-six on a mission trip to El Salvador for a week. We wanted to understand what living in poverty was like and hoped to build some friendships. We also wanted to make a contact with the people who had benefited from one of the Companions in Jubilee awards. Our vehicle was to arrange to help build pig sties on Espiritu Santo, an island where a woman’s coop had a micro enterprise raising pigs to enable them to support themselves. Upon our return, the most common comment on was, “This is so different from what I expected!” We had imagined poverty, but we found it to be exponentially more challenging than we thought it would be. Also, our intentions to be helpful met quite a different response than we expected.