I am a senior at Swarthmore College. My passion is making micro–credit available to women in Anatolia. I founded Micro Anatolia to start that journey with baby steps.
I was inspired to start this project by my previous experience working with Anatolian children when I was exposed to their families’ poor and unacceptable living conditions. As a Koc High School student and Duke of Edinburgh International Youth Awardee, I have volunteered for various organizations and started running “House of Love,” a housing project for orphan girls. What I witnessed was the same story: Anatolian women move into big cities in hopes of better opportunities, but they lack the education and skills to find jobs. As a result, their children also suffer. I have always been interested in children and women’s right. I believe if there is a problem, we have the choice to either ignore it or to address it. I chose the latter and started to make a small difference.
The project Micro Anatolia’s mission is to implement a sustainable microfinance project for the migrant women from Anatolia who live in the squatter settlements, gecekondus in Ankara. The major goals of this project can be summarized as follows: a) to ameliorate some effects of poverty, b) to facilitate the integration of immigrant mothers and young women in the gecekondu to other districts of Ankara c) to help women start their own businesses. The ultimate objective is to economically empower Anatolian migrant women and indirectly their children.
The premise behind Micro Anatolia- supporting Anatolian migrant women to bring socio – economical change to their lives- gives me great excitement. I had the chance to get to know these women and their children through the Creative Writing Workshop I initiated for children with leukemia in the Ronald McDonald Charity House at Marmara Hospital in Istanbul. I ran the workshop periodically for four years while in high school. The Marmara Hospital is close to one of the biggest squatter settlements where more than half a million migrant Anatolian families live. Through teaching, I had the chance to get to know the patient children`s families and especially, mothers, quite well. Most importantly, I developed an understanding for their needs and yearning for economic empowerment.
After I was awarded the Eugene Lang Opportunity Scholarship for $10,000, I designed the Micro Anatolia project in consultation with professors from Swarthmore, Oxford, Wharton and INSEAD. After my internship at BlueOrchard Investments, a microfinance investment manager based in Switzerland, I launched Micro Anatolia in 2009 and started managing the fund. The objective of the project is to provide the initial investment to the Anatolian women to help them start their small businesses. By the end of 2011, 51 women will have received loans and started running their small businesses- with a total of $10,000 in seed capital. Their interests and businesses range from selling traditional Turkish embroidery and handicraft, hairdressing, to selling baked goods, jewelry and women’s clothing.
For more information on Micro Anatolia, please visit http://www.swarthmore.edu/x28418.xml You can meet few of the Micro Anatolia entrepreneurs below:
Nihal Hanim, 26, runs a small beauty salon with her husband. She uses the micro loan of $850 to buy hair dye and brush.
Hatice Hanim, a mother of two, is running a small bakery. After starting her small business in 2009, she now employs four other Anatolian women. Today, as a team of five, they earn around $100 per day and contribute to the families.
The next step in project Micro Anatolia is to help these women, who produce merchandise, sell their products online- in Turkey and abroad. Will you join me?
Ecem Erseker is a senior at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. She will graduate in May, 2011 with a major in Economics and Asian Studies. Ecem studied at Oxford University last year where she focused on Social Finance and Banking. She speaks Turkish, English, French and Spanish.
