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Business Makes you Human

Winding through the labyrinth of shops, the beams and walls of one store are draped in colorful lapas and used clothes. Kebeh Sumo emerges from the dimly lit interior of the shop and introduces herself. She explains she is in the midst of repaying her second business loan this year.

As a part of the Nehemiah Empowerment Initiative of LEAD, the local affiliate of Partners Worldwide in Liberia, entrepreneurs and business owners like Kebeh participate in a twelve-week business training course, learn new strategies of savings, and qualify for larger loans. 

Kebeh describes that she has graduated from the micro-loan program to a more advanced loan. Her business has doubled since working with LEAD, and she consistently makes trips to Monrovia and Guinea to restock her supply of goods.

Kebeh’s business is different because she works to diversify products, she explains. “I have learned good money management, and saving strategies from LEAD,” she describes.

She supports her husband, her four children, and herself on the money she earns in the used clothes business.

When asked one final question, “Why do you do business?” her answer encapsulates LEAD’s purpose and mission. It was not her grandiose story nor her iron will that made an impression.  It is her desire to enjoy, to be, to rest. The fundamental desire inside every person, the will to live, the desire to work, to enjoy relationships, to provide for oneself.

She says, “Business can make you to be a human being.” 

To read more about LEAD, click here.