BASETTERRE, St. Kitts – WOMEN who own small businesses continue to receive motivation to operate successfully and - once they qualify - they can receive a loan/grant from the Women In Small Enterprise (WISE) programme.
According to coordinator of the programme, Denise Byron Morris, since its inception last year, the programme has assisted over 100 women within the Federation. She explained that under the WISE programme women who are in business for two or more years and desirous of borrowing up to $5000 can do so through this programme.
Morris stressed that they do not offer assistance to women looking to start a new business venture as that is not the aim of WISE but rather, funding for such ventures would be given via the SEED (Small Entrepreneur and Enterprise Development) programme.
“We realize that lots of women have small trays and small businesses and some of them don’t keep good records and so when they go to the banks they would not be able to get financing… So we wanted to put something in these women’s hands. When PEP opened up they had this category called WISE and it was targeting women.”
She stated that those struggling small businesses which were unable to secure funding from the established banking institutions, were able to gain some ease from WISE through its loan programme.
She noted however, that more women are becoming the main bread winners in their households especially with single-parent homes and so this is one initiative that helps to keep some small businesses afloat when they are experiencing financial difficulty.
“One of the things we know about St Kitts society is that a lot of the families are single-parent families headed by women and these women are bread winners...we looked at that and decided to fund some small businesses. We looked at tray persons, those who go to the schools to sell and little snacks.”
She stressed that the main aim was to assist women whose sole income comes from their small businesses.
She expounded on the fact that under this programme one can borrow up to $5000 with the borrower repaying only half of the amount they borrow.
“It was a grant of up to $5000,but you know the small trays sometimes the quantity of the good wouldn’t exceed $500. So what we did, we had a category of businesses; you have the hair dressers; we have the small trays and those with the snackettes. However the small trays got between $1500 to $2000 to supply them with 4 times the amount of tray stuff that they needed to replenish their stock and then we had some women in hair dressing who received $3000-$3500 and we had bars and also had little shops in the communities and those got $4000-$5000.”
She noted that when the programme was set up persons were to receive up to $2500 but as time passed they found the need to increase the ceiling on the loan/grant programme.
“Because it was originally suppose to be up to $2500 but we extended it to $5000 and then what you would do is pay back half of the amount you got.”
WISE is a “subset” of the People Employment Programme (PEP) and it focuses primarily on women and business.
