Microfinance In Practice: Borrower Stories
- Borrower: Charlotte Baidoo
- Country: Ghana
- MFI: Sinapi Aba Trust
Charlotte Baidoo is a client of Sinapi Aba Trust and a member of El-Shadai Trust Bank at Pomposo, a community near Obuasi. She is 33 years old and believes in working hard with little resource available to achieve greatness.
She hails from the Central Region of Ghana and is the third of 8 children. Her education came to an end when she completed Junior Secondary school and her parents told her they could not afford a higher education for her. She had to drop out of school to look for a job for her future and to support her younger siblings. Fortunately for her, an aunt asked her to join in her pastries business where Charlotte learnt how to bake cakes and meat pie. She worked with her aunt till she turned 25, got married and started her own business.
When she got married, Charlotte started her pastries business and later added provisions to it. She used to sell the provision and bake pies and cakes on small scale with charcoal in the scorching sun. "My business was in a bad shape," she said. Although people came to her to get some of the pastries to sell, she always did not have enough for them.
Charlotte tried to talk about her problem with a rural bank who promised to help her with loans. She worked hard to save for a long time but the bank did not honor its promise, and her dream of accessing financial support was shattered.
After being told about SAT in Obuasi she went to visit and she realized that not only do SAT clients receive loans but they also receive free training and one does not have to save with them before accessing a loan.
Charlotte has benefited from eight loan cycles to date and according to her, "each loan does a new thing in her businesses." One thing she learned during the orientation and business training was the fact that when the clients receive the loans, the business must expand and experience diversification. She put this to work, and acquired two shops and created a shed in front of the shops. Her provisions business greatly expanded and she now keeps them in one of her shops together with soft drinks. She added the sale of flour, rice, margarine and oil, which she keeps in large quantities to the people in her community. She also acquired a bigger LPG oven, which she uses for baking. In addition, she serves breakfast to workers, students and households every morning, which is also bringing her some income. She serves the breakfast and the snacks at the shed she has built in front of her shops.
Her current loan is ₵12,000,000 and she is doing very well to repay without any problems. She uses her loan to buy more stock supplies and gas. She uses some for her baking and sells the rest in bulk to other retailers.
She purchases all the goods from Kumasi where it is cheaper than Obuasi. She is able to feed her family very well, does not borrow from friends to buy her goods and she said the best part is, she does not buy her stock on credit.
Educating her daughter is her number one priority she's using her business profits to make sure that her child and those she will have in the near future get the very best of education.
- Borrower: Sim Sok
- Country: Cambodia
- MFI: Hattha Kaksekar Limited (HKL)
Sim Sok, age 32, went to a HKL office to request a loan of US $300 to buy a second-hand motorbike for her husband who was unemployed, to use both as a motor-taxi to support their family and also to transport groceries from the provincial market to their home for his wife's business.
After she completed the first loan cycle, she decided that motor-taxi driving is hard work that generates low income. Therefore, in the second loan cycle she borrowed US $500 to buy an oil-run generator for charging customer's batteries. The battery charging business has been successful because it is the only business in the community to provide this necessary service to rural Cambodians. The rural people of Cambodia do not have electricity, so nearly all families use batteries to power televisions, lights and other electronics.
She used her fourth loan cycle of US $2,000 to create two new businesses: brewing Khmer traditional rice wine and raising pigs. These two businesses have a symbiotic relationship. The waste from the wine brewing is fed to the pigs, thereby cutting the cost of pig feed. She used this loan to purchase materials for these businesses such as wine brewing supplies, rice, materials to build a pig hut, and pig feed. Her last loan cycle of US $3,000 was used to increase the stock of her grocery business to meet customer demand, buy new motorbike for her family's transportation, and install a rice mill to create a rice milling business.
Sim Sok said, "I started my grocery business with a very old bicycle, then used the first loan to buy a second hand motorbike. That was the bridge which brought me to owning two motorbikes now, an old one for business and a new one for my family. I run multiple businesses at home and can afford to send all of my children to school. I am the first person to use a loan for business in my community, and now most of my neighbors have borrowed loans to expand their businesses."