Microloans = Success

Part One: Microloans and How They Work

Women around the world are the backbone of their communities, and microloans are the currency of much of their success. “Jobs” with real salaries mostly go to men. Widows and other women who must work alone to feed and educate their children have to create a niche in the “informal economy.”

They make fast food such as cassava balls, or plantain chips, to sell on the street, peddle bread or vegetables  which they must walk long distances to buy.

Some set up a display in front of their house (or a neighbor’s). More successful women may be able to move their operations to a tiny shop in a market, a step up in the world.

Women are creative. Besides food products, they also do many other things. This woman commissioned bricks which are commonly used in building. Windows are expensive but in a tropical climate where winter is not a consideration, a house can be ventilated by open-work bricks set high in the wall, under the eaves of the house.

Part Two: Faithful Returns and Fruits

Imagine living on $2/ day per person: paying for food, for shelter, for everything… AND having to manage your tiny funds to do your business and repay your loan. Yet so many of these amazing women do just that! (A few run into impossible situations: illness, loss of family, and cannot repay.) FEBA gives training in financial management and mentors each woman.

After fellowship, at FEBA’s  monthly meeting, microloan recipients make repayments, which are carefully re-corded; the money then provides loans for other women.

A story: a woman hoping for a loan was just widowed. Her husband’s family took her 10 children (children are wealth) and cast her out; they blame her for his death. She has nowhere to go and no one to help… except FEBA.

New Homes at Last!

In the village of Munene near Uvira, where our partner nonprofit CENEDI works, 20 families have real houses, the first since floods in Jan. 2022, left them homeless.

In 2023, friends at Princeton United Methodist, led by Jie Hayes, began to work with the villagers to build new houses. In 2023, there were 20, in 2024 there were 20 more, and now in 2025, there are another 20! The plaques name nonprofit partners:: WCoA, PUMC, and CENEDI.

The women and village neighbors contribute labor and the materials they can access or make: large stones for the foundation, sun-dried bricks for walls. Then the grant buys cement, nails, roofing, doors and windows in the city of Uvira and transports these by lake canoe to where the villagers can carry them home.

Many Thanks, PUMC!

Many Thanks, Jie Hayes!

Congratulations, determined and strong women and friends!

Accomplishments in Congo 2025

Education

410 primary-secondary school students assisted

8 young women newly literate

60+ young women in

          vocational programs

40 primary school grads

18 secondary school grads

16 sewing school grads

8 cosmetology school grads

14 computer science grads

60+ new microloans for women

5 machines for sewing products

Economic Empowerment

FEBA’s fine clothes shop expanded

           its imports to attract clients

FEBA farm's first harvest since

           violent interruption in 2023

Health and Safety

400+ displaced refugees and

              orphans aided

20 houses built for flood-rape

              victims

600+ sick, food insecure, rape

              victims, dying assisted