WELCOME
The Kopeme Group - A way out of poverty in Togo Kopeme means Village – The Kopeme Group is Social Business for people in extreme poverty in rural areas in Togo as well as people in extreme poverty in the capital, Lome: Microfinance, Rural Electrification, Light for All, Health-Care, Bicycles, Education etc.
The Vision of the Kopeme Group is the end of poverty in Togo. As Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-Peace-Laureate 2006 says: "I differentiate between poor and not poor. That is a great difference. The goal is not to make someone rich. The goal is that someone is no longer poor."- Muhammad Yunus in an interview in "Der Spiegel" 2007
The Mission of the Kopeme Group is: "We are fighting poverty, we are planting trees against climate change, we are making development possible"
- Jérôme Dodji FIAYIWO, founder of the Kopeme Group
Key-indicators of development in Togo (for comparation: Germany)
| Population under 1,25 US $ available income per day in % | 38,7 | (0) |
| Population under 2.00 US $ available income per day in % | 69,3 | (0) |
| Population between 0 – 14 years, 2008 in % | 40 | (14) |
| Life-expectance at birth in years 2007 men | 61 | (77) |
| Life-expectance at birth in years 2007 women | 64 | (82) |
| Primary school graduation-rate in % | 57 | (100) |
| Mortality rate of children under 5 years per 1000; 2007 | 100 | (4) |
| Mother’s mortality rate on 100.000 living birth; 2005 | 510 | (4) |
| AIDS/HIV – Infections population 15-49 2007 in % | 3,3 | (0,1) |
| Tuberculose per 10.000 persons 2007 | 429 | (6) |
| CO2-emmissions per person in tons 2005 | 0,2 | (9,5) |
| Access to better sanitary facilities (toilettes) % of population 2006 | 12 | (100) |
| Internet-user per 100 persons 2008 | 5,4 | (76,1) |
 |
Kopeme Group, October 2011 |
|
Sustainable Finance Awards 2011 |
NEWS INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Per February 2012:
Kopeme Group has 8.500 borrowers. The goal of 2012 ist to reach all the borrowers with solarlights and to provide to as much as possible an energy saving stove. In the 55 villages where we are working we wish to build up 500 new houses per year. Every Kopeme borrower is member of the caravane of health and can get medical treatment. Within the year we wish to buy one container of bicycles to sell more bicycles to our customers in rural areas in order to make possible for their children to attend higher schools which are far away and to be able to transport goods to the markets.
Per September 2011 in Togo with the Kopeme Group we have 6.649 borrowers from whom already 20 % passed the line of extreme poverty because they have already climbed into the highest possible credit-classe by good performance, discipline (which is a real tough thing in Togo: to attend the weekly meetings in time). The highest possible credit are around 150 Euro (100.000 CFA). The highest possible credit class means that those people have more than 1,25 US $ per day - which is passing the line of extreme poverty.
We have installed a mutual health-care-system, the caravane of health, going from village to village, addressing the basic health care needs and also we have saved 15 lives from people whose sickenesses have been discovered during the consultation of the caravane and could be treated in hospitals. The wise women gives advice to pregnant women and young mothers and distributes medicaments so that we hope to tackle the child- and mother-mortality rate. There are no statistics so far so that we cannot yet compare the social impact - the caravane is not receiving informations from the government but giving them informations because nobody knows exactly how many people are living in the villages - our borrowers do not have birth certificates. Kopeme delivers such numbers and helps people to get officially registered as togolese citizen.
We have with the end of this year 1.000 families using solarlight - with charging kits for Mobile-Phones. Here people are always astonished sometimes in an arrogant way that poor people need Mobile-Phones, but coming to rural areas you see that people are writing their Mobile-Phone-number on the walls of their houses. There are no official addresses in villages in Togo. But we ask those who doubt the necessity of a Mobile Phone "Do you have one? For what purpose do you use it? For being more efficient. The poor people use it for the same purpose."
We are also selling solar-radios so that the children who speak Ewe at home have a better chance to get accustomed to the official togolese language which is french. Most of our borrowers do not understand and speak the official language of their country because they have never been in a school.
We also sell bicycles by weekly instalments so that people can overcome the far distances from African villages to town more quickly and transport their heavy weights no longer only on the head.
And we are about to dig the first solar-pomped dwell to deliver clean water to one village to later make a replication. Kopeme Group is working in 55 villages.
With the NGO ana yi africa - bridges towards Africa we are still running our school project for 100 children. Also a sewing-workshop is producing school-uniforms for our borrowers on a very social price.
And we have 2 students with an education loan-stipendium based on donations.
Jérôme Dodji Fiayiwo, Manager of Kopeme Group, 22nd of march, 2011:
Revising our strategy, we are more exigent with discipline and punctuality so that we excluded members who are not the targets we are searching. We have now 8000 members. Our average credit reachs 88€. 37 members died already and the Caravan of health saved 8 members with crucial disease. This caravane has 2000 members. We sold 130 solar lamps (inkl. Aufladekits für Mobiltelefone - Anmerkung Heike Eggers), 40 bikes, 20 solar radios. We are planning to distribute 600 kopeme scholarships according the agreement with SelfMadeCapital Foundation.
With ana yi africa and Aktion Canchanabury, we shall continue keeping 100 children with full support for education in Lomé.
Milestones:
January 2011-
The Kopeme Group has 16 employees and disbursed microcredits to 8500 borrowers.
The smallest loan-amount that has been lent out to an individual is 4.000 CFA – around 6,10 Euro
The highest possible individual amount is 100.000 CFA – around 153 Euro
60 to 70 % of the Kopeme Bank clients live in villages, 30 – 40 % are slum-dwellers in the capital, Lomé. 75 % of the borrowers are women. All of them when starting with Kopeme are considered to be extremely poor.
Kopeme “Light for all” has distributed 100 Solar-Lights to families living in rural areas,
Which substitute the kerosin-lamp that were used before and paid back with the equivalent
that was spent for kerosin,
Kopeme Keke has distributed 60 bicycles to make it possible for people in villages to go 4-times faster than by foot to reach the city or to achieve higher education-level by being able to attend a far-away school.
December 2010 – SEED Sierra Leone, who has been gone through a training in Togo in march 2010 has distributed 300 credits to war-widows and youth in Kenema region, Sierra Leone
December 2010 – closing of the first Private Placement
October 2010 – foundation of the cooperative African Social Business Pure e.G.
April 2010 - the Kopeme Bank has 5.091 borrowers!
April 2010 - The Kopeme Bank is invited to introduce the Programm Lumière pour tous - Light for all" a substitution of Petrollamps by Solarlights by microfinance on a workshop of the WorldFutureCouncil about renewable energies - held in Ghana, Accra in June 2010.
April 2010 - The Kopeme Bank paricipates in the Microcredit Summit in Nairobi, meeting again Professor Muhammad Yunus and creating a partnership with Dr. James Mwangi, CEO of Equity Bank, Kenya
April 2010 - Aktion Canchanabury is supporting the Caravane of Health.
March 2010 - Aktion Canchanabury gives out the bicycles for Kopeme Keke - the Bicycle Social Business of Kopeme.
March 2010 – Field-training for the Social Entrepreneur Mohamed Salia from SEED, Sierra Leone
February 2010 - Olympus Europe and Aktion Canchanabury are supporting the Caravane of Health.
December 2009 - January 2010 - Foreign Private Investors find it smart to invest 200.000 Euro into the expansion of Kopeme Bank.
November 2009 - Attending the Vision Fair at the Vision Summit in Berlin -meeting with Professor Yunus and starting the search for Investors.
June 2009 - Opening of the first Branch in Rural Vogan.
May 2009 - Basis Training with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, studying the Social Businesses of Grameen and first personal meeting with Professor Yunus.
April 2009 - Decision to become professional, founding of Kopeme Bank, counting of people who are organized in traditional saving-and-credit-groups in one area of rural Togo.
January and February 2009 - Attending a Mangement-Training at Dialogue Social Enterprise in Hamburg, Germany, Meeting with CEO of WLP, testifying that Kopeme Bank is working efficient and can expand.
January 2009: The NGO-based Microcredit-Program counts 212 borrowers.
Since 2006 - Micro-Credit-Program - starting as NGO - after 7 years of experience in self-financing and self-organizing.
HISTORY
Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank from Bangladesh received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006 for a model of the fight against poverty, which worked millions of times: the assignment of micro-credits to the poorest people in order to enable them to undertake own steps to leave their poverty.
In Togo, Jérôme Dodji FIAYIWO, the founder of the Kopeme Bank, founded already in 1999 a NGO, which is named PROMO.ORGA:H, promotion of Human Organizations to empower the poor people of Togo to undertake own steps out of poverty. In 2009, the Kopeme Bank was founded. 2010 Kopeme Bank became Kopeme Group."