Marie-Jeanne

Marie-Jeanne has a hard face. When we first met her, she didn't really smile. She was like a quiet shadow behind the Archbishop, lingering in the corners of the room observing us. In fact, I don't think we ever saw her smile.

Archbishop Kollini translated her story for us. She spoke barely above a whisper. Despite her gentle manner, she was beaming with resilience. As we crunched our croissants, we were lambasted by strength.

Marie-Jeanne lived in a rural province of Rwanda when the genocide began. She was immediately widowed and faced starvation and dire poverty without her husband to support her. Prostitution presented itself as a way to feed herself and survive. But when the genocide ended, she decided to give life another go. She walked all the way to Kigali in search of a way to stay alive without killing her dignity.

She became involved in her local church, and started meeting war widows struggling to make ends meet. Some had been raped and found themselves HIV positive. Others had husbands in jail for their crimes. Some had lost their entire families. These women's husbands had literally killed each other. All of them shared only one thing in common: they were determined to stay alive. They couldn't afford to bear grudges against one other.

Marie-Jeanne brought a handful of the women together and they decided that they would form a savings group where each woman would contribute 50 francs a week. They could then use that group savings as a sort of line of credit, and would take turns withdrawing sums to fund costs ranging from emergency medical needs for their children to capital expenditures like sewing machines to grow their fledging livelihoods.

Soon, her credit-savings group had attracted 14 women. They moved to saving 550 Rwandan francs per month. They opened a bank account. They expanded to 1,500 francs/month. They made an eventual withdrawal of 1.5 million francs to buy a knitting machine. Later they withdrew 10 million to buy a truck to distribute their products.

Today, a member of her group can withdraw up to 440,000 francs as a loan. They are homeowners. Marie-Jeanne has a personal savings of 320,000 francs, in addition to a robust line of credit through her group. Each member received a 70,000 Christmas dividend last year. Their account has a balance of 24 million Rwandan francs. They are showing the world that there is such thing as the Rwandan dream, that America does not have ownership over the self-made man or woman as a societal emblem.

Marie-Jeanne and her credit-savings group are a reminder that entrepreneurship is embedded in the human spirit. It does not know race, gender or nationality. It is the wings that bring the phoenix from the ashes of human suffering. The entrepreneurial spirit is a human trait that comes to life when we have passed the fight or flight moment. Marie-Jeanne decided to fight. Now she and her female compatriots are the embodiment of the human will to overcome great adversity.