Corporate Partners
Shared Interest’s partner Thembani International Guarantee Fund has signed a memorandum of understanding with ABSA that will allow Thembani to negotiate increased bank risk-sharing on future guarantees. The new relationship is also designed to rapidly increase the number of guarantees Shared Interest and Thembani will issue, and to accelerate the process of placing them.
“DaimlerChrysler is honored to support Shared Interest’s grand mission. The positive impact of Shared Interest’s investments and programs will be realized for generations to come as they help create sustainable South African communities and business ventures.”
— Frank Fountain, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs for Daimler Chrysler
Photo: from left to right are Mr. Thomas Sidlik, DaimlerChrysler Executive Vice President, Global Procurement and Supply, Queen Mother of the Bafokeng Tribe , W. Frank Fountain on an automotive opportunity mission to South Africa November 2004
Johnson & Johnson has supported Shared Interest’s work in South Africa for the past decade and was eager to also support the development of a financially sustainable and replicable model of HIV/AIDS education for South Africa’s most marginalized women.
Shared Interest’s largest guarantee beneficiary, the Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF), is a micro-credit and savings program that has piloted a training initiative to provide a gender and HIV curriculum with the aim of alleviating poverty, preventing new HIV infections, and reducing gender-based violence. The pilot demonstrated clear changes in the participants’ economic well-being, social capital and empowerment. Women in the sample experienced a more than 50% reduction in gender-based violence – the first intervention in a developing country to demonstrate such effects. Johnson & Johnson wanted to support SEF in scaling this pilot up and has made a grant to SEF to support the next stage of the training project.
JP Morgan Chase Foundation is not only a donor to Shared Interest; it has also provided two recoverable grants to the guarantee fund to enable Shared Interest to increase its capacity to respond to the demand for new guarantees. The current $500,000 recoverable grant from JP Morgan Chase Foundation will leverage the rand equivalent of $5 million by its recovery date in 2011.
Annual Reports