History

The beginning- August 2008

At the age of 23, our founder Sammie Rayner visited the West African nation of Ghana in response to a local chief interested in improving the well being of his village. Inspired by the work of Dr. Mohammed Yunus, she arrived envisioning the creation of a microcredit program to benefit the rural community. Through observation and conversation with the local chief, Dr Samuel Adjorlolo, she discovered a large demand for financial services, and sought to address this need.

Through collaboration with the Chief and a partnership with several local leaders, Sammie developed a pilot project. Working in close partnership with members of the Atorkor Development Foundation, the program supported 30 entrepreneurs in only two months time.

 Initial success January 2008

After six months, the pilot was marked by huge success!  With a 98% repayment rate and positive feedback from the community members of Atorkor village, Sammie realized that she had created a recipe for a sustainable program and began recruiting the Lumana team to expand the program to more communities.  Soon after, eight team members were on the ground in Ghana, giving us a solid foundation to expand on the existing microcredit program, as well as offer new services to clients in the future.

A growing team 2009

In July of 2009, Lumana officially came into existence. At this point, our program reached over 120 people, and expanded to include basic business education training and savings accounts for all of the clients.

A year of learning together 2010

In 2010 we added three full time Ghanaian employees to our staff building off of the strong foundation we had created in 2009. With a larger team we were able to expand our program to serve new communities in need and increase our ability to monitor and learn from our existing programs to see what was most effective.

Lumana to the future 2011

Over the past 2 1/2 years working in rural Ghana, we have learned an amazing amount from our clients, our Ghanaian staff and our local mentors. We have learned of the resourcefulness of rural Ghanaians and we have also seen what they need most to maximize the gains from their hard work. Moving forward we seek to offer our services to a diverse range of new communities to continue creating programs that fit our clients unique needs.  We seek to continue offering financial services to  rural communities in West Africa that are currently lacking them in an effort to give them better options so they can lift themselves out of poverty.

We hope you will join us in spreading Lumana's tested model for improving rural peoples abilities to access loans and save for their future as we expand our model throughout the country of Ghana and beyond in the coming years.