Immigrants are always very entrepreneurial, these women are proving that point with the assistance of microloans. - - Donna Poisl
by Yumna Mohamed
Between braiding clients’ hair in her salon, Matou Mukamabano checks that her two daughters are doing their homework.
With a $1,500 microloan from Grameen America, Mukamabano opened Africa Hairbraiding, her salon on West 116th Street in Harlem, in 2009 and now spends up to 16 hours a day there. Most days, her daughters come to the salon after school, eat lunch and sometimes dinner there and watch a DVD or two after they’ve finished their assignments.
“This job requires a lot of man – no, woman-hours,” Mukamabano said. “African women work harder than African men.”
Immigrant women are one of the nation’s fastest-growing groups of entrepreneurs, according to a 2007 report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Missouri, and have attracted investment from local and international microfinancing organizations. The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneural Activity reported that immigrant women started businesses at a rate 57 percent higher than American-born women.
Click on the headline above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment