Denver Donation Brings Benefits to Ghana Women’s Group

At Newmont’s Ahafo mine in Ghana, the Women’s Consultative Committee (WCC) provides financial assistance to local female entrepreneurs through a revolving fund established to provide micro loans and credit to women with small-scale business ventures.

Recently, the Denver Women and Allies (W&A) Business Resource Group (BRG) sent a donation to the WCC to support the expansion of the current revolving fund. This donation, collected from W&A members and other employees, has increased the beneficiaries of the revolving fund from an average of 30 women per quarter to 107 women over the same period.

The benefits from the Denver donation have been twofold, with the increase in funds also helping to bring more members into the WCC.

The revolving fund was established by the WCC to disburse soft loans to women’s groups to support and expand their businesses and also to empower them to be financially independent. The fund is governed by a Revolving Fund Committee (RFC), which is made up of five members of the WCC. The committee reviews, considers, investigates, validates and ratifies loan applications from local female entrepreneurs. To date, the WCC has achieved a 100 percent recovery rate for disbursed funds.

The RFC has also introduced a savings program that is improving the culture of savings and financial capital empowerment for women in the region.

To date, the RFC has approved the equivalent of more than US$18,000 in loans for women-run businesses operating close to the Ahafo mine.

In the coming months, we will continue working to strengthen the maturity and impact of our BRGs around the world, while leveraging community partnerships so we can serve as a catalyst for local economic development in every region.