SKIpgo

Little girls skipped along the side of a dust road as an African sunrise peeked above the horizon, never knowing that the lasting image they created inspired the name of a scholarship program.

It was 4:30 in the morning, and Shyam was driving with colleagues through the bush—rural areas—of Zimbabwe. They passed countless children who walked miles upon miles to reach their schoolhouses as dusk turned to dawn.

“That’s how much they love education in Zim,” Shyam says.

His team came across a particularly striking group of young girls, dressed in neatly pressed school uniforms with beautifully done hair. They smiled widely as they skipped across blood red soil among tall baobab trees.

“So many of us forget what a privilege school is, we take it for granted,” Shyam says. “But these girls still had miles to go and were so visibly happy… at 4:30 a.m.! They were so excited to get to school, just skipping and going. That’s where the SKIpgo name comes from.”

Witnessing this pure eagerness to learn again and again has connected Shyam to Zimbabwe—the name SKIpgo, which stands for Program for Girls Opportunity, reminds him of the value that these young scholarship recipients, and their families, place on their educational journey.

SKImfi

SKImfi, or the SKI Microfinance Institute, underlines the initiative’s role in catalysing opportunity for its beneficiaries to grab.

“Providing microfinance is great, but as the institute we can only get things started. We’re just skimming the surface,” Shyam says. “We began as a small microlending institution in a corner of the world, in a corner of Africa, in a corner of Zimbabwe. Now hundreds of families are involved, communities are stabilising, and this is the beginning. We are still at the surface.”

The value of what SKImfi alone adds to a community’s productivity doesn’t compare to the bottomless mine of potential that lays in the hands of all the women who receive microloans. As women become more empowered, the spillover effects of their business success will ripple deeply through their countries’ economies.

“We provide the necessary tools to give them a foundation,” Shyam says. “They then take the deep dive and create value for themselves and their communities to meet all of that potential.”

SKI Charities

In the beginning of 2010, SKI Charities was still an abstract idea. Shyam told his NGO friends that he wanted to take microfinance to, of all places, Zimbabwe. He was met with a common warning: “Zimbabwe is too risky; it’s not worth it. Go someplace with, as they say, lower hanging fruit.”

“I always struggled with that term,” Shyam says. “I think, ‘Well, some of us are a bit taller. Shouldn’t we reach for the high-hanging fruit? Can’t we add even more value that way?’”

He continued his early due diligence with peers in the policy and finance communities. He still met resistance. They did, however, express confidence in Shyam himself. They were more compelled to invest in his endeavors than in the country alone, which is why Shyam’s initials became so integrally tied to the charity.

“I decided, ‘Alright, if people don’t believe in potential of Zimbabwe, let them believe in me.’ I’ll put my name and reputation on the organization,” Shyam says. “Let us rise or fall together. We are strong and our beneficiaries have no one else but us; what are we waiting for?”