Posted by Praveen Prasad, WAM NY Chair This year, we received a very strong & and global pool of 40 scholarship applications. After a careful review, we selected approximately 1/3 of those applicants to advance to the interview round. The women we spoke with were dedicated and motivated, and many were already leaders in their organizations or had advanced despite the challenging and resource-constrained environments. Following another round of deliberation, the Scholarship Committee selected the following amazing women as our next WAM NY scholarship recipients: 1. Anara Maksytova, First Microcredit Company, Kyrgyzstan to attend the "Certified Expert in Microfinance" e-learning course of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. 2. Aumau Fau, SPBD Microfinance, Samoa to attend the MicroSave Applied Microfinance Institute in Asia. 3. Darling Diaz, Pro Mujer, Nicaragua to attend Boulder Latin America in 2013. 4. Farida Khushdil, The First Microfinance Bank, Afghanistan to attend Boulder Turin. 5. Nora Ajagjal, Aga Khan Training Academy, Kenya to attend the Diploma in Market-Oriented Small Business Development Services Program at ILO International Training Center. 6. Patsy Mayorga, Pro Mujer, Nicaragua to attend a post-graduate course in Advanced Finance at the Universidad Americana, Nicaragua. 7. Essi Digo, Plan Togo to attend the Savings Group Management Information Systems Workshop at SMDP Togo. In addition, WAM NY nominated Esthebe Charles, Fonkoze, Haiti to the MasterCard Foundation Scholarship Program for Boulder Turin and will be providing partial funding to support her attendance. Posted by WAM Marketing Committee Dear WAM NY, As a woman leading a microfinance institution in the Arab World, my training chances were very limited. Given this, when I heard about WAM NY, I liked the initiative very much, as I felt that I could finally belong to a caring body. Thank you to the wonderful WAM NY for this. Ever since I heard about the SEEP conference, I wished to attend it. Although I had heard about SEEP and its professional knowledge in the SME area for quite some time, I also had to consider the cost of its registration fees, accommodations and flight fees. These costs had stopped me from attending the conference, so I was very happy to hear WAM NY announce that it would help me pay for the conference, as well as training after it. On the last day of the conference, I met with most of the professional cadres in the SME world and attended trainings held after the conference. These trainings were very important for me as a practitioner of SME. The trainings were about the social responsibility of MFIs towards their clients. My organization CEOSS was intending to discuss its social responsibility, so the training came just in time to help us do this correctly. This training left a finger print on my professional life. Thank you so much to WAM NY and its work. I sincerely wish for WAM NY to expand and cover all regions. I also joined a WAM NY meeting, which was a great chance for me to explain my SME work in Egypt and meet some great WAM NY representatives. Great thanks to WAM NY, who helped me to join the conference and the trainings. God Bless you all!”” Thank you, Wafaa William Director of SME sector CEOSS Posted by Praveen Prasad, WAM NY Chair I am delighted to introduce Ms. Wilma Longdon, who was one of our scholarship recipients in 2011. She is also the dynamic executive director of WomensTrust, a 501(c) (3) organization based in Ghana. WomensTrust is a model to bring resources and community-based support directly to the developing world.
It was such a pleasure to interview Wilma, on her trip to New York recently where she was our guest speaker where she spoke about microlending which is the core of all WomensTrust programs. Through it, the organization has built relationships with the women of Pokuase in Ghana, come to understand their needs and wants, and implemented market driven programs that better serve them and their children. 1. Wilma, why don’t we begin by sharing with our readers and members a little about yourself and your background? I am a Ghanaian, born and educated in Accra. I belong to a close knit family and have 3 siblings. My first degree was in Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Ghana and my second degree was in Information Systems at the London School of Economics. I worked in a bank in Ghana for a total of 8 years before my current employment. 2. Describe your current role in your organization I am currently the executive director of WomensTrust in Ghana, responsible for the management of WomensTrust programmes. |
Archives
November 2017
AuthorsWAM NY Marketing Committee. Categories |