Mothering
Out of Poverty
By Rev. Lynn M. Acquafondata
UU Church of the South Hills “Sunnyhill”
May 13, 2007
All of us can celebrate this Mother’s
Day because this is an intergenerational community and it does take a village
to raise a child. Sometimes that village needs to extend across the world. That’s
what microcredit is all about. But today’s services goes beyond just microcredit.
Our society tends to value rugged
individualism and self sufficiency. If a single mother can’t find or hold a job
and lives off welfare, she is stigmatized. If someone at Sunnyhill is sick or
injured or going through a difficult time it’s not uncommon for me to hear some
version of, “I’ll be fine, I don’t want
to burden others.”
Sure, you can gut it out alone, but
reaching out and accepting the care and resources of a larger community
enriches us all, not just the person in need. Life in any community involves
giving and receiving. All of us give and all of us receive in various ways at
one time or another.
Saffie Zimba of
#3: Selling Veggies: Julie Ann Sullivan
My name is Saffie
Zimba. I live in
Then 5 years ago, I
heard about FINCA. But I was scared to join this group of women, very nervous
about borrowing money. Maybe if I couldn’t pay back a loan, I’d be put in
jail. And I was scared to talk in front
of those women—who am I but a tomato seller? The women convinced me they would
help, so I joined. I borrowed $50 to get
spare parts for my bicycle, so I could transport tomatoes faster. And I improved my gardens and grow my own
tomatoes. I buy other vegies from my neighbor, Maika Simbeje, and sell them,
too. I am one of the leaders in our bank.
I vote, and help make important decisions for our group.
Saffie started borrowing money from FINCA cautiously, afraid of what would happen if she failed to pay back the loan, wondering about her own worth. “Who am I, but a tomato seller?” Who are any of us, but aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers, adult children and siblings, friends, grandparents, next door neighbors? Who are we but apartment dwellers and home owners, laborers, professionals, crafts people, homemakers? Who are we, but people like Saffie, with our own set of joys and struggles and insecurities trying to make a way through life? Who are we, but people with both needs and some resources, both tapped and untapped? What difference can any of us make?
Five years ago, Saffie took a risk that changed her life. She went from struggling tomato seller, to successful tomato seller and then she became a community leader, serving as chairperson of her FINCA bank, helping the other women in her village out of poverty. All of us can learn from Saffie.
She could
not have gotten out of poverty alone. Often talent and intelligence don’t
matter if you live in places like rural
Mrs. Violet Siagut can tell us a little bit about what that is like. Mrs. Siagut we would like to welcome you forward to share your story.
#2: Building a Beer Kiosk Judy Armstrong/ Sheila Arendt
I am Mrs. Violet Siagut.
In 1996 I lost everything I had. My husband got sick with the wasting
disease and lost his civil service job. I started selling sodas to neighbors
and travelers, since my home was close to a road. I worked hard but couldn’t
earn sufficient kwachas to buy enough sodas to sell. I could not manage to care
for my husband and keep my children in school.
A friend in my village told me about FINCA. I was desperate so I took the risk of joining
the
Mrs. Violet Siagut, like so many women in developing countries
needed some outside assistance, but not charity, to pull herself out of poverty.
FINCA, the Foundation for International
Community Assistance, supports village banking in developing countries to
help extremely poor people without making then dependent on rich people in
developed countries. (And I’m not talking about Bill Gates, I’m talking about
us.)
Most of the clients are women who need relatively small amounts of money to buy supplies for their businesses, $50-$165 or so. Traditional banks won’t lend to these women because many of them are illiterate. They have no collateral and no track record to insure they will repay a loan to the bank. Often the banks are far from the villages where these women live. Plus they need such small loans that the banks can’t make enough money from them and don’t want to bother. On top of that some of the banks that are willing to lend to these women are corrupt or unstable and the women risk losing what little they do have. The next option for these women comes from moneylenders, most of whom charge exorbitant rates of interest--10 percent per day! At those rates a businesswoman could rapidly end up worse off than before she borrowed money.
FINCA on the other hand charges three to four percent interest per month. They fund a group of 10-50 borrowers at a time who are neighbors. These borrowers run the bank, make the decisions and are responsible to each other to repay the loans.[1]
Muhammad Yunus, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, began one of the earliest microcredit systems in the 1970s. He wrote, “The poor taught me an entirely new economics. I learned about the problems that they face from their own perspective. I tried a great number of things. Some worked. Others did not. One that worked well was to offer people tiny loans for self-employment. The loans provided a starting point for cottage industries and other income-generating activities that used the skills the borrowers already had.
Yunus wrote, “I never imagined that my micro-lending program would be the basis for a nationwide ‘bank for the poor’ serving 2.5 million people or that it would be adapted in more than one hundred countries spanning five continents. I was only trying to relieve my guilt and satisfy my desire to be useful to a few starving human beings. But it did not stop with a few people. Those who borrowed and survived would not let it. An after a while, neither would I.”[2]
Let’s meet our friend Sarah from
#1: Having My Own Restaurant Roslyn Maholland
I am Sarah Banana.
Hah! You think I just sell bananas, but I don’t. I have my own restaurant in
Kachula Market in
I was 13 when I was married; 15 when I had the
first of my seven children. I was
pregnant with twins when my husband died.
In my country, widows with so many children are shunned. I did chores
for people because I got food scraps to take to my children.
For awhile, I tried
selling bananas and fried cassava on the roadside. But it didn’t help much. A friend told me about our village bank, the
Shalom Shalom Bank. At first, the group
members shunned me because I’m a half-caste. (My father was Ugandan.) My friend
Maika Simbeje pleaded and said she would repay my loan if I didn’t pay. But
when they found out that I can do figures, they made me the Treasurer of our
group.
Now I own a small
restaurant and catering business. My
children are healthy. Two daughters are
married and work with me. Martha Makumbi has the banana business now.
Sarah started out as a woman in need. She took a risk, asked for and received a loan. The loan helped her to bring her family out of poverty. Then she went on to put her talents to use helping other women.
This year
we are starting banks in
The average
FINCA client in
The Village Banking group Famn Vayant ("Valiant Women" in Creole) meets in a church in the village of Mass, on the southwestern coast of Haiti. It began with 20 members, but its numbers swelled to 32 in the second cycle of loans. That’s where we can meet three interesting women—Imacula, Deci Marie and Gaspa.
#4: Home-Based Grocery Store Helen Andrews/Catherine Zeldman
My name is Imacula
Eliza. When I heard about Famn Vayant, I
decided right away to join, knowing it would boost my
business selling beans, rice, and sugar from my home. I travel to the market in
Les Cayes by motorcycle, balancing large sacks of food on the back. My loans
from FINCA helped me to purchase supplies
at a much better price than I could before.
#5: Rural Grocery Stand Margaret Hamstead/ Carrilee Hemington
I am Deci
Marie Bien, and I have four children. I
have been selling flour, sugar, bread, and oil from a roadside
table for 10 years. With my FINCA loan, I
was able to purchase my goods at wholesale prices,
increasing my profits. Now I am setting
aside savings. My husband farms corn, potatoes, and rice; that
is what we eat. He encourages me to
reinvest most of my earnings to grow my
business. Some day, we won’t have to depend on farming. It is so
unpredictable. Some years, our harvest is poor.
#6: Bakery Shelly Chandhok/Nancy Bellamy
I am a baker named Gaspa
Garidad. I am in my second FINCA loan
cycle, taking out a big loan of $140.
I am nervous about the risk, but proud of the responsibility. I
bake and sell bread wholesale from my house. I am
setting aside $6 a week in savings. Like
most of my friends, I used to live on $6 a week. I feel very blessed.
Gaspa
reminds me to take time to name and celebrate my own blessings without
comparing them to what others have. I feel blessed today that the stories of
these women have inspired me to follow my dreams with courage and to turn to
others in my times of need. I feel blessed that I can write a check for $100 to help start a Sunnyhill microcredit
bank in
I feel blessed at what these banks are doing for this church. Over the past month a group of Sunnyhillers has drawn together to learn more and to plan the education and fundraising needed to start these two banks. Now we are all taking a look far beyond the walls of Sunnyhill and seeing that our contributions can make a huge difference.
I give today to help these women in