Thursday, April 2, 2009
YOU SPEAK, WE LISTEN
Radnor, Pa.
CABRINI COLLEGE
Pacemaker Winner Vol L, Issue 22
www.theloquitur.com
Andrew McConnell/crs
Fifty-year-old Getrude Kawidi signs for a loan of $6 during the weekly meeting of the Kyaseemu Tweteran Saving and Internal Lending Community at Katooke village in western Uganda. Getrude will use the loan, which she has taken on a month-long agreement with an interest rate of 10 percent, to buy coffee beans.
Micro banks improve lives of poor andy stettler
asst. news editor
ads725@cabrini.edu
When most American college students think of an African town, they think of a remote village in need of U.S. dollars. But under thatched roofs in Fort Por-
tal, Uganda, people have formed their own savings and loan systems to help them save as little as 10 cents a week. On a recent visit to Cabrini, Guy Vanmeenen, Catholic Relief Services’ senior technical advisor for microfinance in Africa, told the story of hundreds of commu-
nities that are experiencing greater financial stability because they founded and maintain what are called saving and internal lending communities. The program is known as SILC. CRS volunteer Mary Oldham wrote in her blog that she has seen success in Fort Portal,
Uganda through SILC members like Kamuthoghera Wilfred, a Ugandan brick-maker who was able to increase his business’ production because SILC loans. In Oldham’s blog posted on the CRS Web site, Oldham is seen with a large group of widowed African women and a few
men, advising the group’s supervisor on how best to record their lending program onto a ledger. The group is a SILC and they have saved the equivalent of $505 over the span of one year. People
MICROFINANCE, page 3
IRA dissidents recur violence in Northern Ireland christine graf deputy editor
acg724@cabrini.edu
Peter Morrison/Associated Press
Update: Monday, March 30 a series of burning vehicles caused security alerts in Northern Ireland. These events are blamed on dissident Republicans linked to the killings of two soldiers and a policeman.
Fear was resurrected in Northern Ireland when the Irish Republican Army dissidents killed a police officer and two British soldiers, within a 48-hour time period. Two former Cabrini exchange students from Northern Ireland, Paul Lilly, a Catholic, and Kelly McKee, a Protestant, have little in common when it comes to government rule in their province, but completely agree that violence is not the answer. After more than 10 years of peace in the Northern Ireland between the IRA and the British government, a group of dissidents from the IRA has taken action into their own hands and have admitted to the recent killings with no intentions of stopping the attacks. Northern Ireland is divided between Roman Catholics Na-
tionalists seeking a united Ireland, and Protestants Unionists committed to keeping Ulster, six counties still run by British government, a part of Great Britain. “The recent killings have certainly created a tension in the province, which I had hoped not to feel again,” McKee said. McKee, 25, remembers fear from the “dark days,” being evacuated from her house while the British army detonated a bomb on her street, seeing a young man shot in both kneecaps in the city and regularly checking the store she had a part time job in for suspicious packages. Lilly, 22, also remembers fear, once having his own town bombed in 1998 by the Real IRA, a bomb which killed 31 civilians in a Nationalist town. “Ten years ago it would not be uncommon to find a British soldier in your back garden in full
IRELAND, page 3