Nguyen Thi Bay is 51 years old. She is a single mother! Her’s family includes 4 children and 1 grandson. After divorcing with the husband, her eldest daughter and her son came back Bay’s house for living. Her second daughter is the student of a college in HCMC. The third daughter is attending high school at grade 10. The last-born son is attending primary school at grade 2 and the grandchild is in kindergarten.
All burden of the family put on Bay’s shoulder. But she has a medical condition with variety of diseases of sinusitis, heart, vestibular disorders and kidney stones and requires daily medication. To have money to pay schooling, her family had to borrow 5,000,000vnd ($US227) from outside with high interest rate of 5%, and more than 30,000,000vnd ($US 1,363) from student-loan resource by government.
This family commenced in the Thien Chi’s micro loan in September 2014 when they were only earning a total of 380.000vnd (US$17) per person per month. Despite struggling with diseases, Bay always tries her best to work hard. Her biggest expectation is to be able to afford let her children attending school.
A special reason we support for Bay’s family is her spirit of escaping poverty and always hardworking. Besides that, Bay is very interested in improving her knowledge through taking part in our trainings enthusiastically. Until now we offered her with the trainings on techniques to take care for dragon trees and health trainings.
At the first time, Thien Chi issued a micro loan of 1,000,000vnd (US$46) per cycle (each 5 months) to this family to purchase fertilizer to take care for their 135 dragon trees. Thien Chi has also provided education scholarship of 1,000,000vnd ($US 45) annually to assist in keeping the children in school.
After 5 cycles (2.5 years), the family is now earning 572,000vnd (US$26) per person, per month. The amount of loan has increased to 3,000,000vnd ($US136). This loan is not only used for dragon trees but also used for Bay’s small business. With desire of earning more money to provide for her children’s schooling and repay the debt, Bay decided to use a part of loan to buy and sell vegetable in the front of the house. Besides earning from dragon trees, her family now has more income from small business with 100,000vnd per day ($US4.5).
In Jan. 2017, after the survey and deep discussion, Thien Chi decided to provide Bay’s family a swapped loan of 5,000,000vnd ($US 227) to help them decrease the amount of debt with high interest. This is a kind of special loan (the amount from US$ 227 to US$ 455) which is only provided for the special poor households who have the debt with very high interest and with positive factors such as: Hardworking, spirit of escaping poverty, schooling for children, repay loan on time, engagement by village workers and local authority…
Visiting Bay’s house in one recent day, she was glad to say that “My second daughter is about to graduate the college, I hope she will get a good job. My house has been fixed for better condition…Thank to Thien Chi’s support, my family’s financial situation has improved and we paid a part of debt. I will try my best to repay the loan regularly. My family still struggling but I am happy because my children continue attending schools”.