Savings and loans help Florença to fill her family’s needs
In some rural areas of Timor-Leste in Baucau municipality, World Vision through Better Food Better Health project, funded by the Australian Government, teams up with communities to improve disability inclusion by supporting them with saving and loan activity. This project is aimed to provide credit access to the members from savings they are having in the group to improve their family life economically.
Florença, 55 years old and mother of six children, is a person with disability that is able to grow her income properly after joining a World Vision training in 2019. During a meeting, she explained, “I gained skills and experiences from the training module provided by World Vision such as transaction and bookkeeping process. While learning how to start saving, I also learned the method of loaning money from the group randomly with the return of interest monthly.”
Florença and her family are raising animals for sale, such as pigs, goats and horses as well as growing vegetables to sell in the market. However, she has needed help due to lack of management skills and no idea where to save her money for the future. So, she decided to join the group named Unidade Fatumaka (UNIFAT) in her village.
In line coordination with the Secretary State of Cooperative, the action is taken to prioritise people with disability inclusion to learn about techniques of saving and loan practices while guiding them to save the money in their group and earn back the interest taken by the members.
Luis, 58 years old, Florença’s husband, always supports his wife. Even though she is a person with disability, he never underestimates her and he helps her with raising their family. “My wife and I always complete each other. I help her do work such as watering farms, feeding animals and cooking," Luis added.
The changes have given Florença and her family good results as she earns money from selling animals, such as pigs for $300 or more by saving half in UNIFAT. In the meantime, Florença has loaned money from the group $400 to buy house materials and rebuild her house. Previously, Florença and her family lived in a tiny house of 6x6 metres. Now, she rebuilds the house with the size 9x9 metres with more space that can accommodate her children.
Communities loan the money to pay for their children’s school tuition, build the house and other family needs. The group provides the interest with 3 percent of the return of actual money every month.
“Thirty seven people with disability including 25 women and 12 men have benefitted from saving and loan activity. Overall, 395 households participated from 7 villages and 15 sub-villages in this project,” said Catarina, World Vision’s BFBH project facilitator.
World Vision expects to expand the project to vulnerable communities, particularly people with disability in World Vision’s project. The project also helped raise awareness of people valuing and respecting each other's right to be involved in the activity.