2010′s Success Stories
HINH, two loans of 48 € for hens, seeds and fertilizers
Hinh lives in the province of Dien Bien, in North Vietnam, on the village of Muong Ang. She and her husband have 3 children (two daughters of 3 and 8, and a son of 5). They all go to school. Hinh lives with her husband, her children and her parents in law in a wooden house on stilts.
Hinh and her husband are farmers: the LUONGS breed hens and pigs and grow corn, rice and coffee, with shovel, pickaxe and plough. Chi Em, our partner established near their village, made it possible for them to improve sharply their farm.
A loan for hens: A first loan, in November 2009, of 1 200 000 dongs (48 €) enabled Hinh to buy 5 hens and a cock. Two months later, there were about sixty chicks. Since that time, Hinh has regularly sold eggs and chiks on the market.
Seeds and fertilizers: Until then, due to the lack of money to buy more seeds and fertilizers, Hinh and her husband used to cultivate half of the 2000 square metre field. In March 2010, a second loan, in kind this time but of equivalent value, gave the LUONGS enough seeds and fertilizers to cultivate the whole field.
Trainings: Simultaneously in this loans, Hinh benefited from trainings (breeding, culture, savings and investment, nutrition). The trainings on corn take place every month, straight on the participants’ fields to be sure that the farmers understand perfectly well the techniques.
Success and ambition: Thanks to these trainings, the productivity of Mr LUONG’s field has nearly doubled (from 200 to 350 kg by 1000 square metre ). It’s the highest in the village. Hinh wants now to develop her pig breeding and can count for that on the support of Chi Em.
CA THI POM, two loans for raising livestock and a grocery store
Ca Thi Pom is 31 years old. She lives in a house on stilts in Muong Ang in the province of Dien Vien with her handicaped husband and their three children aged between 3 and 14; all three attend school. She manages various activities all at the same time :
- she raises pigs and keeps bees
- she grows coffee (her first crop of 30 kg in September 2010 brought in a profit of 30€)
- she has a retail business selling petrol, groceries and beauty products
- she also has a rice shelling and milling activity thanks to two small machines in which she invested.
With the support of Chi Em, she increased her agricultural activities. Since december 2009, Chi Em, our local partner has encouraged this brave and entrepreneurial woman: the program gave her a first loan of 1 200 000 VND (48 €) which allowed her to buy sugar so that her bees could continue to produce honey even during the rainy season. This helping hand enabled her to increase her yearly production by 15 kgs and thereby increase her revenue by 1 500 000 VND (60 €).
With a second loan of 5 000 000 VND (200 €) in July she bought more goods for her grocery store and 4 pigs. At the moment Ca Thi Pom is fattening 14 pigs in all. After 7 to 8 months the sale of each pig will bring in a profit of 15 €.
LO THI DOAN, two loans for her fish farming business
A family from NorthVietnam: In accordance with tradition, Lo Thi Doan lives with her husband and her parents-in-law in a large wooden house on stilts in the northern Vietnamese province of Dien Bien. Her 19-year-old son has just recently completed high school and hopes to go into military training while her daughter, 17, is still in high school. Her husband is a nurse.
A struggling fish farm: As for Lo Thi Doan herself, she grows both rice and coffee, and breeds fish and pigs. Before she became a member of Chi Em, our local partner, Lo Thi Doan never had sufficient advance funding to buy the larger quantities of young fish she needed for her farm to grow; instead, she could only buy a kilo or two at a time, which she would then breed to adulthood and sell for a small profit. And yet, Lo Thi Doan’s pond was large enough to expand her fish farming operations. She just didn’t have the cash.
An influx of capital that changed everything Our partner, Chi Em, granted Lo Thi Doan an initial loan of 1,200,000 dong (48 €) in October 2009 for the bulk purchase of eight kilos of young fry. Over the course of the next year, she sold more than a hundred fish and earned 8,000,000 dong (320 €), including a profit of 6,800,000 dong (250 €). (Lo Thi Doan streamlines expenses by feeding her fish with vegetables from her own garden; as such, her only additional outlay is the lease of a water pump.) In December 2010, she was granted a new loan of 1,200,000 dong (48 €), which,, added to a part of the profit she got with her first step with Chi Em, enabled her to bulk purchase of another 25 kilos of young fry.
All this courageous woman had needed was a little financial assistance in order to successfully expand her fish farming business. During the period of her loans, Lo Thi Doan also received trainings with the programme’s agronomist to improve her pig breeding operations.
