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Press Release 2

For Immediate Release: 28/6/01

Local filmmaker Michelle Savage is flying to Ghana on Tuesday 3rd July to make a film about women working together to set up their own businesses. Michelle's project is funded by an On The Line Millennium Award. She is one of 230 people who received funding for projects connecting our lives in the UK with those in countries in West Africa on the Greenwich Meridian.

Michelle will be visiting organisations across Ghana. She will be meeting women beer-makers in the north of the country, fishmongers on the south coast and Queen Mothers (women who set the prices and sort out disputes) in central Kumasi market. "Wherever I go, " says Michelle "I'll be meeting strong, inspirational women taking control of their lives and beating the poverty trap by becoming self-employed."

Michelle came up with the idea for the film after joining Full Circle at the Women's Employment Enterprise Training Unit (WEETU) in Norwich. Full Circle is a microcredit project: it offers small loans and free training to women on low incomes who want to start their own businesses. Microcredit began in Bangladesh in the 1970s and has spread across the globe. "Knowing the system supporting me in Norwich was helping millions of women in the developing world gave me a real buzz - an energy and a desire to make my business happen. If these women could do it in the face of abject poverty, then so could I."

Michelle will be screening her film at Cinema City in Norwich in September. She has a project website www.circlingtheline.org.uk which she will be updating whilst she is in Ghana. Michelle will be assisted on the trip by Diana Cunningham a writer who is also in the Full Circle project. Diana will be writing a study pack and articles about microcredit to accompany the video.

On the Line is a partnership between Oxfam GB, Channel 4 and WWF-UK, and is the brainchild of Channel 4 broadcaster, Jon Snow. It focuses on the similarities of life and culture from the UK to Ghana along the meridian line and aims is to change the way we in the UK see, think and act towards the developing world.

ENDS

For general enquiries see www.ontheline.org.uk

On The Line was founded by Oxfam GB, Channel 4 and WWF-UK and is registered charity, number 1073841