International Charity for Africa
International Charity for Africa (ICA) is a Canadian NGO and charitable organization delivering community level poverty alleviation support through small enterprise economic development. ICA provides tools, small-business coaching and skills training to promising entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa so that they will grow their small businesses and in turn, create meaningful employment opportunities for men & women (parents) and young people in Africa, to help reduce poverty on the continent. ICA's approach is that when people earn fair wages, they are able to provide their families with fundamental needs, such as food, housing, clothing, health, and education.
ICA feels that the developed world has already spent over 50 years and billions of dollars on trying to solve the problem of extreme poverty in Africa and yet very little has changed today, 2007. ICA believes that what the 80% of ablebodied unemployed (or underemployed) people in sub-Saharan Africa need are jobs, not handouts in child sponsorships or food aid, etc. Parents in Africa would like nothing less than jobs that pay decent wages so that they can take care of their children's needs and pay for necessary social/community needs like water, health-care, roads, etc.
African governments can not create all the required jobs needed today, so local entrepreneurs provide the logical answer. That is why ICA is focusing on assisting grassroots entrepreneurs to become the "engines" that will drive the national economies of sub-Sahara, to sustained development.