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Street Cred development worker Dinar Ali meeting Nobel Prize winner and inspiration behind Street Cred, Mohammed Unis
This year, Street Cred
worked in Hackney,
Newham, Tower
Hamlets and Waltham
Forest with 218 women
in total and intensively
with 125, to develop
their business ideas.
Street Cred ran 247
one-to-one business
support sessions
11 new borrowing
circles were established
as peer-led networks for
developing business
ideas.
25 women developed
either full- or part-time
jobs from their work
with Street Cred - the
equivalent of 11.5
full-time jobs.
There was an average of
22 active borrowing
circles, comprised of
125 women working
together to develop
businesses, meeting 286
times this year.
Since 1999...
Street Cred has worked with 828 women
Street Cred has issued 152 microcredit loans to help low-income women make their business ideas a reality
Street Cred has spent
over 2,000 days
working with east
London women,
listening to their needs
and helping promote
their independence
For more information on Street Cred, download their recent publication, "Making Microcredit Work"
Street Cred exists to enable women on low incomes to develop money-making ideas in east London.
Street Cred entrepreneurs showcase their work at an event in Limehouse.
Dinar Ali, development worker for Street Cred, describes their work:
If you have a skill, from sewing to interpreting for your
friends, we can help you turn that into a business through
fortnightly group meetings and one-to-one support. You
can join a group of five or six women. After three months,
you can borrow £500 from this borrowing circle. You have
to make at least two payments before the others in the
group can take a loan. There are networking events where
women from all four boroughs in which Street Cred works
meet together, train, share ideas and have lunch.
At group meetings everyone has a chance to update where they’re at with their business. Someone may be looking at premises, or defining their business idea, someone else may have income issues.
We only work with women. The Grameen Bank who started this system found that peer support and peer lending had the most effect on the whole community by working with women. We’ve found the same here. Women work together and support each other with their problems.
I’m a Bengali woman who was born in Mile End Hospital and have lived
in Bow all my life. I joined Bromley-by-Bow Youth Centre as a
teenager, became a volunteer youth worker and have been doing
community development work ever since. Street Cred is community
development, but it’s that much more challenging, because it demands a
lot from the women who take part and engage with self-employment.
33% of Tower Hamlets are Bangladeshi. There are opportunities here
for people to build better lives for themselves and their families but the
streets aren’t paved with gold. There is still prejudice - soft racism - so
people make assumptions and attitudes are reflected in things they say
or do. Some people are surprised when I say I work for a Quaker
organisation! But the values of Islam and Quakers are similar.
I see women really trying their best to make
life better for themselves and their families.
Street Cred works because it is so
challenging. You can only do so much to
upskill someone through language classes or
childcare courses or sewing classes – that
bit’s easy. It’s the next stage: moving on is
difficult. Street Cred is exciting because it
achieves this. That’s real regeneration.
To those who say, it sounds great but I can’t see it working, I’d say, come and visit Rasheda’s clothes shop in Bethnal Green Road, speak to Philippa who has a homeopathic practice up and running, Karen who has a café in the High Street in Walthamstow, or Simply Homemade Food who are preparing to tender for contracts in schools. If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t have been here for so long.
What do our service users think of Street Cred? Click here to read the story of one Street Cred entrepreneur or see the websites below, all thriving businesses which began with Street Cred's support.
www.secretshairpromotions.co.uk
www.millenniumvisualarts.netfirms.com
www.drugandalcoholeducationservices.co.uk
www.prowess.org.uk/start/inspirationmoredetail.asp?id=132
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Charity Registration No: 1069157 · Company Registration No: 3524063
