Eufenia

Loan description:

Eufenia is 70 years old and married with six children. Eufenia and her husband are both engaged in agriculture but 15 years ago Eufenia, with the help of the microfinance organisation, FACES, started her own business raising livestock. When she first started out, Eufenia's first loan was for $100 when she only had a couple of pigs and chickens. Now she has at any one time about 5-8 fully grown pigs, some piglets and a number of chickens. Eufenia sells her pigs and chickens to people in the local area and often attends the free market on Sundays in the local town centre to buy and sell livestock. FACES have given her a $3,000 loan this time to pay back over 18 months since she has repaid all her previous loans successfully and without any problems and since her business is now a lot bigger, she needs a bigger loan to purchase more piglets, to buy good quality feed and to buy wire to build fences round her land. Eufenia has been able to get a loan through FACES' credit hope programme since one of her children has a disability and requires full-time care. The credit hope programme allows families with a member or members with disabilities to have credit at low interest. Of Eufenia's six children only two still live with her. They are 35 and 27 and help Eufenia and her husband run their businesses. Her other children are married and live separately. Having her own profit-making business has been essential to Eufenia since not only does she need to pay a number of medical bills for her daughter but Eufenia has been sick and had to have a tumour removed from her neck. Without the profit she makes from raising livestock it would not have been possible to pay for the surgery to have her tumour removed. Eufenia hopes to keep working, to keep healthy and to keep making profits. She will pay this loan back over 18 months.