empowering women through financial literacy

Women become empowered and feel secured when they are financially sound without depending on men for their daily living. To be financially secured one needs to be financially literate. Most women in Ghana are petty traders who sells anything that is available for them. To expand their businesses, they take loans from micro finance companies and instead of their businesses expanding, their businesses rather decline. the question is why is it so, the loan agreement they sign they do not understand the clauses in the loan agreement forms and some of the agents rely on that to cheat them. What my team and I do is to educate these women of their obligations as per the loans they are contracting and explain all the clauses in the loan agreement form for them to understand and also, it's effect on their business before they engage in them.  We also, educate them on how to invest in mutual funds and register for the third tier pensions. we also run financial literacy programs for the women groups. for the past two years since we started, a lot of the women have now being able to save and invested which have help them improve their businesses by ploughing back their savings into their businesses. we do all this at our own expense and our motivation is the smiles on the faces of these women and who are making it to help their communities. A financial literate will do more than a financial illiterate with the same amount of cash.