Leading with Care: How Women Around the World are Inspiring Businesses, Empowering Communities, and Creating Opportunity

Growing a Business by Employing Others

After thinking it through and discussing it with several women in her credit union, Fourera decided to hire a worker from her village to collect and chop firewood. She paid him a monthly wage of $14; her firewood business ultimately generated a profit of $45 a month. Once again, she was in the position of deciding how to reinvest her money.

She didn’t have to think about it long before she discovered an opportunity to start a small sheep-raising enterprise: buying young, small lambs and fattening them up to sell at a much higher price. She had learned through Mata Masu Dubara that male sheep garnered a premium price at the end of the Ramadan month of fasting, but she had no idea how much profit actually ...