In 1990, ECHOPPE began a small loans program in urban Lome, Togo. This program focuses upon helping the poorest and the marginalised women in the community to have access to economic opportunities and thus social inclusion through small loans and social services. ECHOPPE today has over 3000 beneficiaries in two countries and has given over 10,000 loans in past years. In order to alleviate poverty, one must study the causes or the injustices that are the causes of poverty and react on several levels. Grameen created the Sixteen Decisions to react to this situation as well as identifying other kinds of loan opportunities, such as for housing. In addition to this, you have also created co-operatives for marketing handwoven textiles (i.e. Grameen Check), etc. using the strength of the numbers of beneficiaries in Bangladesh.

ECHOPPE, like many Grameen replicators, is not a bank, but a not-for-profit association serving the poorest. In the light of this and knowing that there are other credit institutions available but which are savings and credit institutions where one must first save before receiving a loan, ECHOPPE plays the role of a first step in a process to economic independence and full citizenship. We provide first loans without guarantees to the poorest.

After women have had 4-5 loans, the life situations change enormously. Child nutrition increases and some improvements in living conditions are seen. Many women will have been able to save near to $100US during this time. But to better respond to their needs of increased capital, shop construction, or whatever, ECHOPPE does not pretend to continue to be able to answer all these needs. By this time women have gained confidence and their savings are transferred into a cooperative savings and credit institution. In Togo earlier this year, the ECHOPPE "Coopec" (Co-operative d'Epargne et credit) began with nearly 200 subscribers under the direction of the women themselves. (The first of its kind led 100% by women in Togo.) These women beneficiaries have put together all their savings in order to provide larger loans to one another, all under their own direction and leadership.

The most important of these actions however, is in the development that each woman experiences¾a development in self-esteem and consciousness raising that suddenly helps them to see that if they work together, for example all the bakers can get flour at lower prices, or they can put pressure on community representatives for the construction of latrines or the clean up of garbage dumps.

Suddenly, they become the voices of those who suffer the same as they have suffered, in order to speak out against the sale of children as domestics, unjust inheritance laws or the equal education for girl children.

Credit is step number one. We can't study literacy or fight for rights when our children are crying for food. But credit is not the goal. It is only a tool.

Thank you for introducing the idea, but as other institutions replicate your work, please let them understand that focusing on credit alone makes us a part of a system, where liberty is spelled too often only in economic terms. Credit must be a tool used to build human strength and justices whose values cannot be measured in simple economics.