Mbonweh is a non-political and non-religious organisation with 100% women membership.
The General Assembly
Mbonweh is a not for profit organisation. The highest decision-making
body is the Annual General Assembly.
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The Board of Directors is made of Executive and Group leaders elected from groups representing about 4.000 members of the association. Group leaders are elected by their groups and the executive is elected by the general assembly for a three-year term of office renewable twice. |
Meeting of the board members in July, 2007.
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Group Leaders work as field workers, who work daily with their groups and represent the network core in the implementation of the association's activities. They work along with their group members and are responsible for their group's loan. They collect the loan applications from the central office, take them to the members and return the completed applications to the office. They are guarantors of the loan and use sometimes unconventional methods of debt collection. This can include visiting the family home and threatening to remove personal goods to sell to recoup the loss or pestering the husband for money. At times the rest of the group takes care of another member's debt or the whole group can lose their right to draw a loan. This kind of group work, cooperation and solidarity of women has guaranteed a very strong repayment record throughout the history of its micro-credit scheme.
National and International Volunteers
Mbonweh Organisation receives and works with national and international
volunteers, who work in various fields from fundraising to accounting
to primary school teaching.
Project's Committees are deans of the various programmes
and serve in management and other technical know-how.
All members of Mbonweh play an important role in the decision-making of the association. Information flows smoothly from bottom to top and from top to bottom as all clients belong to groups supervised by a group leader, who represents the group in the board meetings. Most of the registered members are entrepreneurs or clients, who can be granted a loan equal to three times her savings. Some members only take part in Mbonweh's educational scheme and training.
In the Micro-credit Scheme three employees receive a salary at present. All other Group Leaders (34 Field Officers) and the President herself are voluntary workers who receive ex gratia payments to cover expenses - they do not draw a salary. However, this does not include the personnel of the other projects such as 14 salaried workers of Mbonweh Unique Children's Educational Program.