Increase SOS Fund to Save Expiring Microloans

The SOS Loan Fund has now lent over $55,000, and your donation has helped make this happen.  The thing about lending on our platform is that your donation goes to motivated small business owners who decide how best to improve their lives with a small loan.  The expanded business helps the business owners have better housing, eat better, have access to medical care and even educate their children!

While many loans are to individuals, our platform also helps groups of people.  In some countries there is a custom of pooling money and taking turns using it to build a business.  However, sometimes pooling small amounts of money that the individuals might have available isn't much to work with.  With a loan from outside the low income area, there is a real chance to build a stronger business and help move out of poverty.  Senegal is one country with a history of pooling money and taking turns using it.  Here is one story of a borrower group:

This group was created and inaugurated in July 2012. The group members have good relations. Their main business is retail.

Ms. Maimouna is thirty-seven years old. She is the group’s featured borrower. She is married and a mother of three. She works in the retail of men and women’s clothing; she also sells accessories.

With her new loan, she plans on purchase men and women’s clothes in the amount of 250,000 XOF, accessories for 100,000 XOF, handbags, and shoes for 125,000 XOF. She will also pay 25,000 XOF for return transportation to be able to retail in her own neighborhood.

Profits will allow her to grow her business and pay for her children’s school expenses. She will also help her husband manage daily expenses.

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This is a recent loan that has been repaid to the revolving account that Poverty 2 Prosperity has to lend to entrepreneurs around the world.  This loan is a group loan, so we contributed to several borrowers that wished to improve their families's lives.  Thank you so much for contributing toward our efforts to help families help themselves by creating jobs.  These jobs contribute toward better housing, sanitation, health care access and education.  Here is the description of one of our borrowers:

Elisa is a single, 40-year-old woman. She has two children who are 8 and 16 years old. Her business is the sale of cuñapes [cheesy bread balls].

She is a good mother, independent, and very hard-working. She does business in the town of Puerto Pailas, a rural area that specializes in handicrafts and gastronomy.

Elisa is tanned and well-built, with long hair. Her mother language is Guaraní, and she speaks Spanish. She lives with her children, who attend school.

The need to improve her business made her start a communal bank of people with jobs such as police uniform sales, a cleaning service, cereal sales, legging sales, diaper sales, sporting clothes sales, and livestock (cattle and pig) sales.

Her business is the sale of cuñapé, which is a small roll made of yucca flour with cheese. It is very popular at any hour of the day. "I bake at night and sell during the day," she says. The advantage of her business is that the sales are daily; the disadvantage is the lack of capital to purchase cooking supplies such as yucca starch, milk, cheese, leavening, etc.

Her dream is to improve her sales. She wants to purchase cooking supplies to bake cuñapes. This is her 1st loan cycle with the institution in the 20 years that she has been in this business.

For these reasons, Elisa is requesting a loan to purchase cooking supplies to bake cuñapes.