Sign Up





leave blank if unsure:
Home arrow What's New arrow Shade Bembatoum-Young: Why I Support the GROWTH Act
Shade Bembatoum-Young: Why I Support the GROWTH Act PDF Print E-mail
Shade Bembatoum Young has dedicated her life to help women in Nigeria escape poverty by starting and growing their own businesses. Learn why she supports the GROWTH Act.

  Interview with Shade Bembatoum-Young, Founder and Executive Director, African Sustainable Small Enterprise Export Development Foundation (ASSEED), Nigeria

In 2006, Shade traveled from all the way from Nigeria and spoke at an event on Capitol Hill celebrating the launch of the GROWTH Act.

Learn More About the GROWTH Act.
Women Thrive: Why is it important to empower women economically?
SY: Because women are our best hope for ending poverty. It's just so crystal clear. A woman will spend her last bottom dollar on her family, on her children especially.  No matter how poor she is, she'll always find something, and whatever she finds will go first to the children. It is very important to empower women.  And when you do, you see the results instantly.  In our region, there is a high infant mortality rate. The root cause is bad nutrition. If a woman is earning anything at all, she puts it into the soup pot.

My experience over the last decade has been with helping African women start and grow their businesses.  Because there is so much poverty, all small entrepreneurs in Africa face hurdles to earning an income, but the task for women is doubly hard because they do not have the same opportunities as men. I have seen hardworking mothers with beautiful products who cannot get enough credit to grow their business enough to send all of their children to school. I have seen talented women who are not allowed to attend trainings that would help them earn an income. We need to empower these women, because otherwise  they will stay in a position where they are expected to be breadwinners without the resources they need to do it.

Women Thrive: Why do you support the GROWTH Act?
SY:  In my opinion, the feminization of poverty worldwide, and the fact that there have been an increasing number of women-headed households in Africa over the past couple of decades, because of war, conflict, retrenchment exercises, and of course the ever present HIV/AIDS problem, the fact that you find so many women who have this huge responsibility on their shoulders to look after their families, to make sure that their families are fed, clothed, educated: all this makes it even more important to ensure that women are given the necessary tools and the opportunities to actually go as far as they can go.  Not only in starting micro-businesses, but also in growing their businesses. 

All small entrepreneurs in Africa face enormous hurdles. Microfinance is, in my country, just beginning to be formalized. There is a growing recognition that a lot of women need to go further than that, and they can if they are given the opportunity.  The sad part is that very few of them get these opportunities, which is why I support the bill.

Women Thrive: How did you come to lead an organization like ASSEED?
SY: Usually people have a passion and feel that they can make a positive difference. But what pushed me was frustration. Since I was an export development consultant I was not really focusing on women in the beginning at all. In 1996, I was asked by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to write a paper on my work on integration and trade in West Africa, because at the time, no one was working on that issue. I started to travel around Nigeria looking at women-owned companies and cooperatives, and that got me into products like homemade soaps, cosmetics, and food snacks. The women were behind these small businesses but they did not have the means to make a real profit even though the potential existed. So it made a lot of sense to keep focusing on those products and on women. What was needed was an organization that would help these women develop, produce, and market products ready for export. That's why I started ASSEED.

Shade Bembatoum-Young is the Founder and CEO of the African Sustainable Small Enterprise Export Development Foundation (ASSEED) in Nigeria, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to assist small, medium and micro-enterprises as well as cooperatives, producer organizations and craft associations to develop products with export potential into internationally competitive, exportable items that comply with rapidly evolving global quality, environmental and human rights requirements.  
 
Ms. Bembatoum-Young began her career as a translator and interpreter, but has built a reputation as a strong advocate of non-oil and non-traditional exports, economic empowerment of women through fair trade, sustainable development and the development of crafts export in Nigeria.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 January 2008 )
 
[ Back ]