LIKELEMBA WITHOUT BORDERS

Likelemba is an African system of solidarity savings mechanism where several members put a certain sum of money in a "pot" and every month, the total amount contained in the pot is then donated to one of the participating members(Wikipedia). Nowadays Likelemba is been harder to do due to poverty.

MY IDEA:

LIKELEMBA WITHOUT BORDERS is a new company that supports financial solidarity between America, Europe and Africa. The company just opened up this month in Luanda ( Angola ) and is already succesfull.

LIKELEMBA was a way to help people in financial difficulty or in poverty, through solidarity, the person could start a little business with the huge amount of money, but now it is been harder and harder for women and men to use LIKELEMBA so that they can help each other because everybody is in the same situation: no job, poverty, kids to feed, etc.....But thanks to Maria Pedro Miala who innovated the concept and added the help of technology to create: "Likelemba Without Borders" people can still do LIKELEMBA with somebody overseas: a friend, a stranger or a family member who has a job and is also able to participate, they can send each other the money in a couple of minutes.

Thanks to the company people in Africa will be able to start a a little business or actually finally buy the material they wanted to start their business. They will do this with the help of their mobile phones, people are able to send money overseas in a couple of minutes to somebody else and guess what? IT IS NOT A LOAN. LIKELEMBA WITHOUT BORDERS will provide you with the information of people who want to participate and the mobile numbers of the persons, then 5 to 6 persons wil be registered as a group and will have a code that only they can use, each month they will send a certain amount of money to the person's who's turn it is to receive the amount. The company will verify if every member of the group sent the amount of money to the right person and the circle will continue.....

The company is even thinking about creating little businesses in the villages too, it is important because most people in the villages that don't have access to internet do have access to mobile phones and most people don't have a bank account. So even those people will be able to participate in " LIKELEMBA WITHOUT BORDERS"..

When I interviewed Maria and asked her how she is helping the people and what impact does her company have she said: " We are here to help poor people being able to afford things they normally wouldn't be able to afford or achieve without this financial support". "Just imagine : a young woman in Africa wants to have an ICT training and she has to pay 1000$, but she only earns 200$ a month, she won't be able to pay this. If she does LIKELEMBA with four other women it can help her to pay for school and be left with enough money for herself. Another woman wants to start a business, she wants to sell hot dogs and beer at night ( this is a business with a lot of success in Sub-Saharan Africa ) but she doesn't have the capital to start this business, well with the help of LIKELEMBA she wiil be able to start her business and the best part is she will make profit that will be only for her and she won't have to get a credit for that because she never loaned any money since every woman will have also their turn and will get the same thing".

Well, this is surely a promising business.

Maria Pedro Miala