The Atem Foundation self-sustaining micro-financing initiative provides collateral-free, and interest-free loans to women from impoverished African communities to assist them in starting businesses, building assets, and gaining critical business skills to support them in generating long-term incomes, permanently improving their household standards and quality of life while positively positioning them towards achieving financial independence for themselves and their families.
The Atem Foundation microfinance initiative was created to assist in tackling global poverty rates and improve the disenfranchisement of impoverished, rural women and young women in Africa’s poorest communities while empowering them with economic opportunities.
We collaborate with local partners and community leaders to screen, train, and issue interest-free loans of $500- 1,000 USD to impoverished women to begin their businesses. We also organize business training, conduct site visits, provide ongoing entrepreneurial education, and assist participants in working with local banking and financial institutions that may view women in poor and high-risk communities as high risk and high cost.
The former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan once stated that microfinance could be a “weapon against poverty and hunger.”
The Atem Foundation microfinance initiative is designed to break down barriers for economic prosperity and assist low-income households in poor and out of reach communities improve their livelihoods and save for future needs with a goal of providing over 5,000 with microfinancing assets by the end of 2025.
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Research Grants
The Atem Foundation funds rigorous and unbiased research and analysis that provides expert recommendations and strategies to furnish an empirical foundation for our future programming, policy direction, and reform advocacy.
We believe that research is a collaborative process, and every action helps contribute to the larger puzzle of solving systemic issues such as poverty and crisis. Further, we know that community-based research is necessary to remove the social, cultural, and logistical barriers that often confound the well-intentioned efforts of various organizations and programs.
Our research grants are tailored to empower local communities, and engage student researchers and scholars to explore innovative, efficient, and effective mechanisms to address large scale issues such as poverty, economic deprivation of women and young girls, and armed conflict.
Grant applicants open on an annual basis and all selections will be made by a dedicated AF team of grant specialists.
Due to the volume of applicants, only successful applicants will be notified.
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