Passage III

Auntie Ocloo

[1]

Dr. Esther Afua Ocloo: first chairwoman of Women's World Banking, preferred to be called Auntie Ocloo. "Auntie" is a traditional title of respect in the African nation of Ghana, her native land. Born in 1919, she became a highly successful entrepreneur, industrialist, philanthropist, and international leader.

[2]

Ocloo knew that her countrywomen would need to have a steady source of income. In order to gain access to education and health care. So, at the 1975 Mexico City gathering that opened the United Nations Decade for Women, Ocloo, with like-minded women, will have developed a "microlending" plan. Here's how it works: A large lending institution lends the initial money to a microlending institution, $5 million or more. Then the microlending institution, such as Women's World Banking, makes a small loan (as little as $50) to, in contrast, an artisan or a food vendor whom would not qualify for a loan from a commercial bank. After the business grows and the loan is repaid, the microlender makes a larger loan available.

[3]

After high school graduation, with ten shillings given to her by her aunt, she bought oranges and made twelve jars of marmalade, which she then sold on the street at a nice profit. From that beginning, she worked throughout her life to provide two essential opportunities for African women: appropriate training and access to credit so that they could begin their own enterprises.

[4]

Since 1975, twenty-five million people—three-fourths of them women; in more than forty less-developed nations have received microloans. Likewise, ninety-eight percent of the loans have been repaid.

[5]

In 1990, Auntie Ocloo shared the Africa Prize for Leadership with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. For their efforts to fight hunger. (44) She helped them, for example, learn to calculate costs and profits on the rice and stew they sell on street corners like the one where Auntie Ocloo first sold her marmalade.