Sundari Gurung, chairperson of Hatemalo women’s cooperative in Kathmandu, Nepal, spoke with a small group of students Saturday about her organization’s work to help Nepali women. Gurung was brought to campus by IMPACT! (Integrity and Mobility for the Poor through Access to Capital Today), an on-campus affiliate of IMPACT! Humanity Inc., a student-initiated NGO that works to finance and raise awareness for Hatemalo.

Helen Gugel ’06, founder of Wesleyan’s IMPACT! met Gurung last summer during a trip to Nepal funded in part by a Davenport grant. Hatemalo, started by Gurung in 2001, gives impoverished Nepali women access to savings, loan, and insurance services. These women lack the requisite material collateral to back up their loans and are therefore not served by traditional banks or institutionalized financial structures. With help from a cooperative, they are able start their own businesses, utilizing their highly marketable traditional skills like basket-weaving and wood and bamboo craft-making.

“Only one percent of the women can do this themselves,” said Gurung. “This is why we work together… Hatemalo [in Nepali] means ‘handshaking.’”

The cultural separation between men and women in Nepal’s society makes a woman’s situation especially difficult. According to Gurung, women have no economic or property rights in Nepal; once they marry, they must leave all their property or let it fall into the possession of their husbands. The division between castes puts women of lower castes into an even more vulnerable situation. Gurung’s cooperative works primarily with women of the lower castes.

“Economic empowerment is the best empowerment of women,” Gurung said. “Many women know…I have to take care of the husband, children, family…I don’t know I can take care of me.”

In addition to loans, Hatemalo runs an awareness campaign and savings program. Many women begin saving in amounts as small as $1.25 per month. This is significant, however, because the average income in Nepal is $225-250 per year.

“If you want money, you must try to save,” Gurung said. “If you have a project or business that you want to start, we will help you.”

The cooperative also runs health and sanitization workshops, as well as learning and literacy training programs.

“So many people are uneducated over there…maybe 40 percent of our board members are illiterate,” Gurung said. “If [a woman] has some type of skill training, she can do something…otherwise, she is lost.”

Hatemalo is a democratic organization; the cooperative elects its own board members. Gurung currently serves as chairperson.

Hatemalo is the second women’s cooperative Gurung has started. The first, called Naari (the Nepali word for “women”) was started by Gurung in 1995. She handed the chairmanship over to a new director in 2001.

“We’ve always talked about the cooperative and Sundari, all the people we’re helping,” Gugel said, who helped create the NGO which assists Gurung. “It’s another thing to see her…to put a face to all this.”

Gugel and Pia Dubitsky ’06 founded IMPACT! Humanity, Inc. after they became interested in microfinance during their freshman year. Microfinance capitalism involves the provision of financial services, both savings and loans, to enable the poor to purchase and sustain private, small-scale businesses. Gugel and Dubitsky are also teaching a student forum this year on the subject. According to Gugel, who is writing her senior thesis on microfinance, they first became aware of the subject during a spring break trip to Florida.

“We were sitting around sipping $4 ice coffees and reading The New York Times when we came upon an article about a woman who was mired in poverty for lack of the $2 she needed to buy raw materials to make clay pots, a skill she was adept at,” Gugel said. “We looked at ourselves and our coffees, and just felt so silly and guilty that the world could be so unfair.”

IMPACT! has hosted several campus fundraisers this year, providing the cooperative with enough money to supply 20 more Nepali women with loans.

Currently, two more fundraisers planned for the end of the spring semester, including a hip-hop dance performance on April 22 and an outdoor concert between Fountain and Pine St. on May 12, where they will be selling items made by Nepali women including handmade pashminas, bags, and jewelry.