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First Step Initiative is a Minnesota-based microfinance organization providing access to capital, skills training and information to poor entrepreneurial women in the DRC to help them increase their social and economic status. First Step Initiative is incorporated as a 501(c)3 in the State of Minnesota and we operate under a group exemption as a subordinate organization of Grand Central Charity Inc.
Why We Do It
Although endowed with vast potential wealth, including the second largest rain forest in the world, fertile soils, ample rainfall, and considerable mineral resources, it is estimated that since 1998 perhaps as many as 3.5 million people in the DRC have died from violence, famine and disease.
Today the DRC ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world, with about 80-percent of its inhabitants living on what the ministers at the World Bank refer to as “the brink of what human dignity can endure.
The good news is that despite past instability, political progress is moving forward. A new constitution was ratified by the country’s national assembly in 2006, and last year the first democratic election occurred in more than 30 years. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are assisting the government with economic reforms as well, and relief organizations are at last bringing aid to millions of displaced persons.
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First Step Initiative concentrates its efforts on empowering women living in the slums of Lubumbashi, where little opportunity exists for hopeful entrepreneurs. Lubumbashi, a city of approximately 1-million people, has an unemployment rate as high as 90 percent. Typically women here have a higher unemployment rate than men yet are most often the primary or sole family caretakers. Helping them gain additional daily income improves the condition of their entire household and community. 