Microfinance in Liberia
Behind the Lens: Profiling the underdog
Zubin Cooper is a filmmaker who worked as a radio and video producer during the Second Liberian Civil War, which ended in 2003. He shared with UNDP some of his thoughts on the UNDP-supported microfinance project that helped one of his subjects, Kebbeh, rebuild her life and livelihood after the war ended.
"As a Liberian, I have seen where the country has been. There’s a very big difference between where we’re coming from and where we are going to. Two years ago we would never have believed we could get to where we are now. If we just stay the course and maintain the discipline and focus on hope and the future instead of past wrongs, we can definitely be a good example of a transition from a war time society to a peace sustaining society.
During the war years, a lot of people were going through the motions of life. People didn’t want to make an effort because three months down the road some little 10 or 12 year-old boy could take a gun and steal everything you have. Now, you definitely see hope, a desire for change. We have a government that is more or less responsible. It’s not perfect but we can work with them and improve our lives.
As a journalist, I love positive stories of hope about the underdog. Everybody likes those kinds of stories but I find them particularly newsworthy in Liberia because some of those stories are really incredible, especially if you think about what they survived and now what they are doing with their lives in spite of it. Kebbeh, one of the women in the film, is a widow and former refugee with two children who lost her husband during the war. She began with one gallon of palm oil, but through this microloan programme she has incorporated a palm oil business and she is about to start exporting oil to the United States. You see someone who is building a future not just for herself but also for her children, her family and her employees. She has built a warehouse and a new home and today she sends her children to private school and university and supports her extended family.
This project isn’t giving hope to everybody, but it’s a little nucleus that will spread. When you send a kid to school, that’s one more who is likely not to fight, or if it comes to that they are more likely to turn to dialogue. Each person who you employ, that is someone who has a definite salary at the end of the month so now they have something to live for, something to hope for, and this newly democratic experiment we are engaged in right now is more likely to succeed."