Excerpt from Transforming Lives $40 at a Time by Dana Whitaker “It’s very significant for me to be making profits from my own business,” exclaims Mrs. Du Ying, a young girl’s giggle emitting from her wide-mouthed smile. Sitting on a squat wooden chair, Ying takes a short break from the work that has transformed her family’s life in every way. From a ramshackle stone, straw and mud hut to a solid four-room brick home; from hunger to a well-balanced diet; and from wondering how to support her children’s education to saving for future schooling; Ying’s profits are creating possibilities for her family that are as richly toned and imaginatively conceived as the luxurious silk rugs she now weaves on her own loom.
Until a few years ago, all Ying had known was hard, relentless work from factory to field. When she wasn’t weaving silk rugs for a meager wage, she farmed the small plot of land allotted to her family. Neither her income nor the food she grew were enough to adequately support her family.
One day, staff from the Funding the Poor Cooperative (FPC), a Grameen Foundation partner, held a meeting in her rural community in Nanzhao County, Henan Province, China. They offered Ying and other impoverished women an opportunity that was both tempting and frightening -- a business loan of Y1000 ($125), which she could invest in her own rug weaving business.
Never, in an entire year, had she and her husband earned a combined income that came close to Y1000. She knew she had weaving skills, but could she sell her rugs? Could she pay back the loan, plus eight percent interest? Could she afford to contribute one percent of her loan to a compulsory savings plan weekly over 12 months?
She weighed her options: struggle with the poverty she knew or risk starting her own business with all the untested steps that such an undertaking entailed. Finally, buoyed by the assurance that she and four friends would join a borrower group and serve as each other’s collateral should one member be unable to repay any part of her loan, Ying accepted FPC’s offer.
She has been weaving her dreams ever since.
Ying gets up from her chair. Her 15-year old daughter, Pan Xian Na, who is being trained by her mother in the art of rug weaving, follows her to the rough-hewn loom standing at one end of their spotless, new kitchen.
Fall’s afternoon glow enters from a nearby window, casting golden rays onto the bucolic pattern being rhythmically woven by mother and daughter. The rug’s country scene, with its opulent amber, ruby and navy colors, mirrors the landscape in which Ying lives. Men tend flocks of sheep, women wash clothes in a nearby stream, children chase ducks away from piles of drying corn, and leaves turn from verdant green to golden yellow, burnt orange and wine-red.
Working together, mother and daughter will complete the rug in four to five months. And with China’s growing rug market, especially for intricately designed pieces such as hers, Ying will sell her expertly wrought rug in the market for Y2-3000 ($250-375), double or even triple the Y1000 ($125) cost of making it. She’ll earn plenty to repay her loan, support her family’s needs and wants and purchase items to fill her new home.
Ying’s deft fingers seem to fly in and out of the taut vertical threads as she adds layer upon layer of color to the growing scene in front of her. “I like weaving and I’m good at it,” she says matter-of-factly while glancing up to study the complicated paper pattern hanging from her loom in front of her. “Now I have my own business and our standard of living is so much better. I feel so good!”
Excerpt from Transforming Lives $40 at a Time by Dana Whitaker. Reprinted with permission.
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Grameen Foundation's mission is to empower
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through access to financial services and
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technology, we help the poor, mostly
women, start self-sustaining businesses to
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