Example of the success of the women’s bank

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The interest paid by the women’s loans in 2013/14 went back into the women’s overall bank account to pay for more women to enter the program. As a result of the interest paid 15 more women from the community of Ahorra Esquipula entered into the loans program for 2014/15. The women from this community used the money to buy and raise pigs.

One of those women, Petrona, borrowed 1,200 pesos – about AUD $100 to buy two pigs and put in an extra 1,200 pesos herself that she had saved through her involvement in the savings group, a system under which PDA matches the savings of the women, peso por peso (Petrona saved 600 pesos and PDA matched this). After one year she sold the pigs for just $500 dollars, making a profit of almost $300.

With the money Petrona made she bought another pig for $50 and spent the rest, $250, on materials so that she and her husband could build a home made from mud bricks and corrugated tin roof, just in time for the arrival of her first child.

 

 

 

 Other women have bought cows using the bank

 

An example of a loan being administered

 

 

More examples of pig purchases