Help empower communities so they can create their own economic opportunities. With investment, training, and support from World Renew, communities are taking control of their own development through savings and loan groups, livelihood and literacy training, and business start-ups.
Our Economic Opportunity Work
World Renew provides initial funding and training so that communities can create their own local economic and financial solutions. Through economic development programming with World Renew, communities ensure their long-term goals by boosting incomes and creating new job opportunities. World Renew also invests in literacy and livelihood training programs, so that community members can start their own businesses and improve their quality of life.
See how World Renew helped Nvou in Nigeria find the key to economic opportunity:
A Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) is a group of community members who save money together and take small loans from those savings. VSLAs provide important financial services to lower-income communities that do not have access to banks or other financial institutions. Loans given through VSLAs help people start their own businesses, purchase essential items, obtain health services, educate their children, and more.
Empowerment and Advocacy
World Renew programs empower and build the resilience of participants, particularly women, by strengthening their leadership skills, financial literacy, and decision-making power. This improves community ownership over shared resources and ensures all community members have an equal voice in leading and advocating for change.
People have benefited through World Renew’s economic programming in the last 10 years.
People were involved in village savings and loans groups in 2023.
New Opportunities with Every Stitch
Reigniting hope & enacting change from within communities
Mafusa learned to sew from her mother, Diwilara. Now, they are business partners, working together to run a shop where they create the most exquisite saris and kurtas in Bangladesh. For Diwilara, sewing is a source of pride: “I provide these garments for my community, so they must be of the highest quality.”
But, the work is also about so much more than that. Diwilara’s shop brings dignity and hope to both mother and daughter. Diwilara gained her sewing skills through a class with World Renew’s local partner and found a way to provide for her family. She then taught Mafusa herself, and together, Diwilara and Mafusa are teaching Mafusa’s daughter. Today, their family is benefiting from new economic opportunities—and Mafusa is instilling in her daughter the same skills and love of beauty passed down to her.
Through World Renew, women like Mafusa and Dwilara are learning that a single sewing class can stitch a new future of opportunity. With every gift, you can help to sew these beautiful stories of change.