Monrovia, Liberia – The Cornelia Wonkerleh Kruah Empowerment Fund on Sunday presented business support packages, including umbrellas and L$10,000 each, to fifty female entrepreneurs in District 13 of Montserrado County. The program seeks to encourage women to attain economic independence and support small enterprises.
Cornelia Kruah, Deputy Minister for Administration at the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs, established the fund to help women who are struggling financially as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, the Ebola outbreak, and Liberia’s history of civil war.
The initiative is intended to assist women who frequently become the only breadwinners for their families in the face of adversity, such as widowhood, the unemployment of male family members, or desertion, Minister Kruah remarked during the distribution ceremony in New Georgia Estate.
In order to provide for their families and send their kids to school, these women many of whom lack formal education engage in small-scale street hawking. According to Kruah, this money is how I give back and assist them in becoming independent.
According to her, the privately funded empowerment fund started in her home district of District 13 and is currently expanding. Encouraging women traders to become self-sufficient and productive members of their communities is the fund’s main goal. “This empowerment is about maintaining dignity and discouraging risky survival tactics, not just about money,” she continued.
The program will soon reach marketplaces throughout Montserrado County and eventually all fifteen counties in Liberia, according to Kruah. She emphasized that for women who fit the fund’s eligibility requirements, nondiscriminatory assistance is its goal.
The fund will eventually become a legitimate non-profit corporation that would provide recipients with training in business administration and planning, she added. “We seek to provide them with the expertise to succeed in addition to a new business. Kruah stated that this will get more backing from the government and foreign allies.”
Madam Kruah stressed that in order to increase its influence and reach, the fund seeks to look for collaborations with national, regional, and global charitable groups in addition to the Liberian government.
