Lumana Programs
Providing loans and business education courses so our clients can save, create a business plan and calculate their income and expenses. Successful clients are given larger loans and leadership classes to grow their businesses and create jobs. Another huge aspect of our program is our data collection service. Lumana staff in Ghana collect data on potential borrowers in order to map out community needs. This allows us to better understand how to support the communities we serve.
Education
In order to further tie in our supplementary educational program with our goal-oriented approach, Lumana continuously reevaluates our education program and how it serves our clients. Over the past two years, we’ve been fortunate to connect with an incredible group of local leaders and mentors. These people play an active role in shaping our training and mentorship programs as well as helping support cooperatives.
Lumana provides a focused, three day business training class for all first-time borrowers. The curriculum consists of savings planning, basic accounting, business planning and more. This basic skill set supports our clients in running their businesses, planning for the future, and achieving their goals. After the three-day training, clients then cover the rest of our business education in smaller classes which are taught during their ongoing cooperative meetings.
We believe educating clients about the programs they participate in is a central responsibility of a financial services provider. Therefore we ensure all of our clients are properly educated about the risks of taking a loan as well as the opportunities it creates for business growth and savings.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
A recent story of success: Cecilia Amedey is a single mother living in the coastal town of Dakordzie with her only son Emmanuel. She is a fish monger by profession and used her last loan from Lumana to build a new stove which allowed her to preserve and sell more fish. This led to increased profits and savings for her household. Over the course of six months, Cecilia was able to save nearly 30 Ghana Cedi (~$22 USD) with Lumana, enough money to pay for half a year’s primary school fees in Ghana. Cecilia is an amazing woman who works multiple jobs to support her family, including being a steward of the local beach which she cleans every day before heading to work as part of a government initiative to decrease litter.
As a leader, she is absolutely amazing and inspires the other members of her cooperative to get to the meetings and set bigger goals for their own businesses. Cecilia is a client who is dedicated to the Lumana program and we look forward to helping her to realize her current goals for expanding her fish mongering business this summer.
A current need: 250 individuals like Cecilia are currently waiting to join Lumana’s program in rural Ghana–that’s 50 cooperatives who could benefit greatly from our business training and micro-loan program.