Felix King Endows USD 500 K SME Grant For Widows
Ambassador and philanthropist Felix King, the founder and president of Felix King Foundation, has announced a new initiative tagged Widows Economic Progress Meetings (WeProgress) with USD 500 K funding grants for the 2018-19 calendar year project.
The WeProgress is wired to transform disadvantaged widows into small business owners, and the initiative was officially launched in Lagos on 23rd June, the International Widows Day. Targeted also at active poor rural women with the single mother status, WeProgress is set to engage communities were maltreatment of widows still is prevalent. The initiative is set to directly impact 5.4 K widows and poor rural women in over 380 cooperative meeting group’s format.
According to Felix King, “Today, over 90 percent of these women struggle to own small businesses are denied access to capital. WeProgress will help these women in Nigerian communities gain access to the required capital to build their small businesses”. The project is necessary “So that they too can contribute to the prosperity of their families and that of their communities,” he added.
WeProgress is a rural-based program that will encourage participants to form a meeting group of 10 to 20 women, appoint their representatives and obtain a verification letter from the recognized community head. Once the group is certified, the Felix King Foundation will give a business rotational grant to the meeting group while the Community Head will act as a patron. According to the founder, this woman-help-woman scheme will systematically disburse funds. He remarked, “Beneficiaries are expected to contribute 40 percent of their initial capital grant received from the Foundation in a year to the purse of the meeting group for four persons, who initially did not make the meeting group and two persons in 6 months”.
You may want to ask what the 20 percent contribution will be used for. King answered this pre-expected question with the statement “The 20 percent contribution from the members will be extended to new members that will be nominated by the meeting group to benefit”. He made an instance USD 27.78 each to the purse of the meeting group, which will amount to USD 277.78 within a period of 6 months”.
He added that the USD 277.78 would be credited to 2 new members that would have been nominated by the meeting group. And, at the close of the 12 month period, a 10 member group meeting will expand to 14 members.
