In 2008, SAFWCO nominated 5 entrepreneurs for PPAF Citi Micro Entrepreneur Awards for best performing entrepreneurs who are PPAF partners’ micro finance clients.

Ms. Sahibzadi, “City-PPAF Best National Micro-Entrepreneur Award Female”

Sahibzadi, a 24 year old disable Micro-Entrepreneur of Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organization (SAFWCO), won 'Best National Micro-Entrepreneur Award Female' at the Citi-PPAF Micro-entrepreneurship Awards 2008.   “My life has never been a worriless purpose ever till I got to become a member of SAFWCO credit program” says content Sahibzadi.

She has passed through her childhood and grown with this disability.  Her community members often teased at her disability as she generated hatred towards the word Jaddi- – a feminine Sindhi word for feeble, vulnerable human being- “I felt disappointed, hopeless and inferior to others. Despair always hovered around my life” she described her feeling to the teasing remarks she has from others..

Her thinking about life took a shift, soon after she knew about SAFWCO credit program. “That provided me a vision. It was not about to take loans but was also to manage life. This was a life changing opportunity for me. I started to join their meetings, listened to their talks and got motivation. It influenced me allot.” She recalls the awakening.

“It was time for me to re visit my self. I now concentrated more on what I can than I can’t.” Sahibzadi gloved with the maiden idea of self-consciousness, took first loan of Rs.10, 000(US$ 120) and with sefl-saving contribution of Rs.2000(US$ 23.98) purchased a buffalo-calf. On the other hand she got admission in sewing centre to master this art.  Sahibzadi graduated from the centre in three months. For mastering this skill she sold one of her goats for Rs. 5000 (US$ 59.94)and purchased a sewing machine. Hence she started sewing at home. Gradually her customers increased and she became able to repay loan installments from her own earnings.

She invested her subsequent loan amounts in purchase of goats and a milking buffalo. She earned good profit from this business .Besides she continued sewing at home. Her cumulative savings for that year risen to Rs.20, 000(US$  230).  She is quite satisfied now and happy on what she has done.

She has now earned equal treatment form her community member. ” now no one calls me Jaddi. I am Sahibzadi Darziani-Tailress for all”.  She contributes in family. Keeping the sewing orders rise in her mind she had planned to purchase 5 more machines and establish a sewing skill centre for girls of locality. “I wish to see all my graduates employed in sewing”. She envisions

Mr. Muhammad Naeem, “City-PPAF Best Regional Micro-Entrepreneur Award”

The laborer turned wholesaler Muhammad Naeem, a 36 year old Micro-Entrepreneur of Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organization (SAFWCO), won 'Best Regional Micro-Entrepreneur Award Male (runner-up)' at the City-PPAF Micro-entrepreneurship Awards 2008.   “Whatever I have earned it is fruit of hard work ” says Naeem.

His elder brothers separated after their marriages while he along with his younger brother remained with their old parents. He would do labor work on construction sites and earned wages of Rs.80(US$ 0.96) for his labor. It was very hard for his family of 4 to survive.

Muhammad Naeem, had only few days’ apprentice ship on his fathers pan cabin, when he applied for first loan with SAFWCO in 2004. “I saw a ray of hop in SAFWCO credit program and got convinced about my inherited skill of pan-selling .Hence I applied for loan to establish a pan cabin” He recalls.

He got first loan of Rs. 6,000(US$ 71.93) in 2004. He contributed Rs.3, 600(US$ 43.16) forms his savings and rented a pan-cabin. He started his business by investing Rs.8, 000 (US$ 95.91) in purchasing pan, katha , metha masala , and chalia. His business got footing and he began reaping a good income of his investment.  He started saving Rs. 100(US$ 1.20) in a local saving committee. ”I have learnt through hard labor days that austerity is the only way of life that suits me”. Naeem tells about his maiden learning.

With a span of two years, Naeem’s pans become famous in the town and his customer increased to three folds. He purchased a larger cabin for Rs. 6,000(US$ 71.93) in the same area and turned his existing cabin into a godown  ‘I was so happy with the vary thought of ownership. Yesterdays laborer has become today’s property owner’. He recalls the feeling he had when his income and savings translated into a maiden property ownership. 

Muhammad Naeem expanded his business to surrounding towns. He purchased raw-katha and chalia at subsidized rate form Hyderabad and Karachi. He offered it to local cabin holders on a minimal profit margin. His sales and income increased day by day so the number of customer. He employed his younger brother with him on cabin.

In September 2006, his godown stock flooded   to dirt with intruding rain water..in the  same year her wife got ill for few weeks after giving  birth to a dead child. This event rendered him a heavy emotional and financial loss

Naeem believed in hard work .He reorganized himself altogether. He focused more now on his pan-cabin. With flourished business and regular savings he had never fell short to loan installments. He resumed his wholesale business within few months.

The story of Muhammad Naeem does not end here he now has purchased a shop for Rs. 175,000(US$ 2098) where he intends to start flour mill for his younger brother. He has flourished his business with proper planning, commitment and hard work. He plans to expand his business in other villages and towns. His income was Rs. 3000(US$ 35.94) in year 2004 when he first applied for loan. His current income has now risen to Rs.22000(US$ 263.76).

Haleema’s Tale

It was a step down for Haleema when she wedded her man in 1999. Her husband was a daily wage-earning laborer whose only skill was agricultural work. Her father being a carpenter specializing in the construction of timber frames for houses did pretty good business and life for the unmarried Haleema was not so bad: as a school-going child and for some years after she received a daily allowance from her parents.

Prudent by nature, she saved up her pocket money and by the time she was in her teens, had enough to purchase a buffalo. This she brought with her dowry when she came to live with her husband in village Noor Ahmad Jut. Within a year, she was the mother of a daughter and shortly afterward ill luck struck. The infant fell ill and the buffalo that had been Haleema’s only supply of milk had to be sold off to pay the medical bills.

For Haleema and her husband, it was not a spiral into poverty: they just fell headlong. For ten years, in which time they added two more daughters and a son to the family, the couple knew only misery. Though her husband, an unskilled farm worker, turned up for work every day, more often than not, he returned home about midday without work. For ten long years hunger and deprivation shared their little hut with them.

In February 2009 Haleema became a SAFWCO candidate for a goat and mat-making raw material. Since she sold her buffalo to pay her daughter’s medical bills, this was the first time in nearly nine years that the family had milk tea. Earlier, they purchased a quarter liter in the morning and an equal measure in the evening mainly to feed their children. The parents themselves made do with black tea.

With the goat delivering up a whole liter of milk (half in the morning and half at sunset), there was enough for the children. Simultaneously, the thousand rupees monthly stipend took care of their most urgent food needs. With the constant worry of keeping body and soul together behind her, Haleema set to work making mats. The buyer purchased in parcels of ten mats and working like a woman possessed she completed a set every seven days. As she exchanged her first batch of mats for three hundred rupees, the feel of the notes sent an electric thrill through her body.

This was her first real money. To tell the truth, she had earlier also done this work. But with the contractor supplying the raw material, she received just thirty rupees for a parcel of ten mats. With her husband purchasing the raw material as soon as she runs out of it, Haleema has maintained a steady monthly income ranging between twelve to fifteen hundred rupees from this work.

Meanwhile, towards the end of June, the goat became pregnant and stopped giving milk. Haleema was no longer bothered because now there was money to buy whatever milk her household needed. Replenishing her raw material with a thousand rupees a month, she spends part of the remainder for household needs and even manages to save up some money. Besides the contribution to the compulsory saving, she has not only managed to purchase a goat to resume the household’s milk supply but has also squirreled away a little sum for emergent needs.

Seeing her diligence, SAFWCO next gave Haleema a small store of raw materials for traditional embroidery together with four chickens. An expert embroiderer herself, Haleema calculated that the slow and painstaking embroidery work would pay less for the time consumed. She therefore prefers to sell the material to customers from her village. At a mark-up of ten percent, her average daily net earning is about twenty rupees. Once again, her husband chips in as her purchaser and the store has never been out of supplies.

Of her four chickens three died shortly after she got them. The remaining bird steadfastly laid one egg daily, which added greatly to the meager table-spread of Haleema’s family. At five rupees a piece, eggs also mean ready cash and she is never averse to selling an egg or two when a customer calls. Meanwhile, ever practical she saved up from her monthly stipend to purchase two hens of the hardier local breed and now has a steadily increasing flock of hatchlings.

With her eyes on the future that she once dared not think about, Haleema has moved her elder daughter from the local government school to a nearby branch of The Citizens’ Foundation School. With an English medium education she hopes her daughter will be better equipped than the parents to take on the world. All her other children will, in turn, go to that same institution.

When Haleema’s husband was invited by friends in Badin for a day’s outing Haleema did not balk at the idea of his spending three hundred rupees on his trip. ‘I gave him the travel expenses,’ says Haleema with a smile.

Before February 2009, this wonderful woman could not have imagined she would have such sums of money to spend for her husband’s pleasure.

Naseeba No Longer Needs To Migrate

The huts of village of Yaqub Murghur, surrounded by a circular perimeter of thickly growing mesquite, has been home for Naseeba and several other families for the past ten years. That was when these poor sharecroppers were chased out of their old village by the landlord.

Naseeba’s story is scarcely different from those of other ultra-poor delta dwellers. As an unskilled farm worker, her husband earns around fifteen hundred rupees per month and the family therefore knew only abject poverty. To add to their misery, they had the rudest of shelters for a house that failed to protect them from the monsoon rains. Because they could not afford the impervious palm frond mats on top of the roof of bulrush, they were never safe from rain.

Consequently, when the weather turned inclement, Naseeba and her family together with several others migrated to the safety of the nearby school. It was just as well that the monsoon coincided with the summer vacations or these hapless people would have been without shelter. The sickening routine of the annual displacement and three months of cramped living in the three rooms of the school with six other families is not a pleasant memory for Naseeba.

One day in February 2009 the sun rose with a different light piercing through the darkness of Naseeba’s life. That day SAFWCO gave her two goats and mat-making raw material. For the first time in many years Naseeba and her family had milk tea. And for the first time in many years, she was no longer slave to the contractor who brought her the material and paid her a paltry thirty rupees for each mat she made. From now on she was selling her ten-mat packet for four hundred rupees.

Naseeba had her priorities right, however: before she started earning, she needed to set her home in order. The first batch of mats she produced were used to reinforce the roof of her own hut. In order to make her hut as weatherproof as possible, Naseeba needed a total of thirty mats (three bundles of ten mats each) which, had she purchased them from the market, would have cost fifteen hundred rupees. Transportation would have been another couple of hundred rupees. This was the kind of money Naseeba and her husband had never even dreamt of. And so they had always lived with the misery of migration and with it the loss of privacy every summer.

With that worry over, Naseeba saved up from the sales of her mats and the subsistence allowance to add to her one-room hut. She now has an adjoining kitchen and needs no longer sit under the blazing mid-morning sun to work on the stove.

With the two goats having multiplied to five, the spirit of entrepreneurship is upon Naseeba. One of the three kids being male, she plans to sell it by year’s end and replace it with another doe for she keenly looks forward to increasing her flock. She is however not concentrating on goats alone. Saving from her subsistence allowance, she purchased three chickens one of which is already on eggs. There will be time enough to feast on eggs, she says. Right now the plan is to have at least half a dozen egg-laying birds.

Asked what it would have been like if the TUP Program had not touched her life, Naseeba says with heart-wrenching simplicity, ‘We would have continued to live as we have always done.’

A Life Is Saved

Ayesha died in March 2009. Young in years and first-time mother, she left behind a husband to mourn her and a son who would never know her: Gulshahat was a mere eight months old when his mother passed away.

Life in village Itebar Ali Shah was as bleak as it could be in the delta and Hussain, the infant’s father, was hard put to raise his son. For a while it seemed the child had forfeited his lease on life, but then his aunt Parsa undertook to raise the boy. Living under extreme poverty that permitted only irregular meals and nursing her own daughter of the same age as Gulshahat, Parsa soon discovered that she did not have milk enough for two infants.

When her milk failed and with no means to purchase it, she fed the children a gruel of wheat flour, ghee and sugar cooked in water. Too young to be weaned to solid food, both suffered from prolonged bouts of diarrhea and vomiting and as Parsa watched them grow weaker, she dreaded death would steal both children from her.

Though there was never any money to purchase milk, there was of course the arrangement of procuring it as payment against providing fodder to a goat owner. Whenever possible, Parsa would feed the children and set out with sickle in hand to cut and gather in her shawl a bhari of grass that weighs about twenty kilograms. The exercise cost her four to five hours away from home, but when she returned she had a liter of milk from the goat-owning Othos in a neighboring village. It was tough, back breaking work, but it kept the two infants alive.

If anything, it was only a miracle the infants survived the two months between Ayesha’s death and the arrival of the TUP Program in Itebar Ali Shah in June 2009. The goat Parsa received was like a gift from heaven above. With the animal delivering a liter of milk daily, she no longer needed to toil five long hours away from home to feed the babies. Over the next two months she watched their wasted bodies bounce back to rosy good health.

Both the children are now past their first birthday. Looking forward to mating her goat in order to increase her holding, Parsa has another doe on per, the traditional system where one acquires an animal to rear. Pregnant when she got it, the goat has delivered and is now providing Parsa the milk needed for her family. Parsa hopes to keep the goat over the next year or so. When the fourth kid is born, she will return the animal and the three kids retaining one as her wages for tending the goat. Meanwhile, as her herd grows, the two goats will alternately keep her supplied with milk.

Parsa has taken but a fraction of the Rs 15,000 rupees that the program offers to each beneficiary. Right now she has her hands full with the goats and the two little children. By and by the children will become sufficiently independent. Then Parsa will be ready for a second input. For the time being she is thankful that she saved her nephew’s life.

The Comeback

Village Itebar Ali Shah has no medical facility. Consequently when there were complications in the last days of her pregnancy Rashida and her husband Ghulam Qadir hurried to Mirpur Sakro, the nearest town for medical assistance. They had two thousand rupees in the purse, money got from the sale of a goat.

The para-medic at the Sakro health unit told them Rashida’s case was beyond the capacity of his facility and they would be well advised to try Jinnah Hospital at Karachi. When she was admitted, Rashida realized that whatever was left of the sum they had set out with was not sufficient. She instructed her husband to return home, sell off the remaining two goats, their only possession, and return as quickly as possible with the money.

Ghulam Qadir did the needful and within a day was back at his wife’s hospital bedside with another three thousand rupees. Rashida remained four days in the hospital and delivered a boy, their third child. The joy of this new addition to the family was mixed with the gloom of the loss of their only worldly wealth. As the couple set out for the return journey, they had just enough money to get them home.

Back in the village Qadir returned to his old routine of daily seeking farm work and getting it only every other day. But now his monthly income of just about a thousand rupees did not seem very much: with the livestock gone and their daily supply of milk lost, the couple found it difficult to feed their three children. From a life that was never really comfortable, the couple moved several notches down the scale. Now Rashida could only serve up a chili paste with chapatti twice a day. If Qadir did not get work two days in a row, even this meager fare was not possible.

For two years life remained a dreadful, soul-destroying grind of lurking hunger and the constant worry of how they would tide things over were one of them to fall ill. It was plain good fortune that such an eventuality did not happen.

In March 2009, Rashida and Qadir became recipients of a grocery shop and two months subsistence allowance under the TUP Program. The stocks, worth just three thousand rupees, were kept in a tin trunk in their one-room hut and Rashida was in business. Six months down the way, the stocks value nearly twice as much and the family once again owns a goat valued at Rs 2600 as well as three egg-laying chickens. All this made possible by meticulous book-keeping and saving.

With a smile Rashida says that she keeps the money while her husband, because of his few years of education, minds the ledger and replenishment of the store. She points out that they never ever use any part of the profit from their business on their own pleasure for fear of not having the funds to restock the store when needed. For that, she says, there will be time in the future.

The more pressing requisite is for her to send her elder son back to school as he once did. He unfortunately shared his class with some boys of the richer Syed family who jeered him for his shabby clothes and for not having any spending money during recess. When the boy’s demands for daily pocket money became too much for the parents to handle – demands that they could not meet, they withdrew the child from school.

If she could double the stocks of her small store in five months and yet purchase an expensive milch goat, there is no doubting that Rashida will soon be able to afford giving her son the pocket money he needs to stand up to his tormentors. That will be possible when she expands her business. Plans are afoot to build an adjacent room to serve as the store. More space will mean more stocks and greater business.

That is the immediate plan. Beyond that, the sky is the limit.

Siddique: Aged By Poverty

Despite his grey beard, deeply lined face, fatigued voice and tired body, Siddique is not past his fiftieth year. The weariness lies not in his body; it lies deep in his soul. This is the exhaustion wrought by five decades of crushing poverty. When SAFWCO came to his village Umar Parihar in February 2009 and selected Siddique as a beneficiary, he felt he could not handle the responsibility ‘because of his age.’ His son Mohammad thus took his place to become the owner of a goat.

With no education and no skill, Siddique and his wife toiled through life to raise two children, both sons. Poverty denied Mohammad, the elder child, any education and so, much like his father, he too ended up as a daily wage earning farm laborer. By the time Siddique was about forty, he was burnt out and his son, then barely ten years old, took over. Only the character changed the story remained the same: a mere pittance of a wage and that also every other day at best.

If Siddique’s family had ever had any dreams, they died unattained within their bosoms for their road was long and their endless night dark as dark could be. The goat that came into their lives did no more than provide them with a little milk daily. Even that was not to be sniffed at because now they were saving the cash they spent on it from the son’s income. They virtually clung to it, pampering it for all it was worth. When the SAFWCO team visited the village two months later, it was clear that this client was ready for another input.

Now, village Umar Parihar had no grocery store and so in accordance with the demand of Mohammad and his parents, stocks worth three thousand rupees were provided to the family. In five months, good shop-keeping and assiduous saving increased the stocks to a little over twice as much. That was not all, however. Putting away the profit of the store, saving much of the monthly subsidy and living almost entirely, by Mohammad’s earning, the family garnered a net saving of ten thousand rupees in five months. This money was duly invested in leasing a block of land.

The lease expires with the rice harvest in November and Siddique is hopeful that his share will provide sufficient grain for his family for a full year. With less to spend on food needs in the coming year, Siddique says he will have greater savings. Next year he may well be able to invest twice as much on a fresh lease. If things go well and if he has his way, after putting away his family’s need from next year’s harvest, he will have some left to trade. That will be the first ever time in his life that he will be doing business just as landlords do it.

From Beggary To Goat Rearing

Fatima of village Yaqub Sheikh has no teeth in her mouth and no point of reference in time to be able to tell her age. Indeed, so unaware is she of the passage of years that she cannot even say when her husband died. One has to ask roundabout questions concerning the ages of her daughters at the time of that death to ascertain that it occurred about the year 1995.

Life with four daughters to bring up was never easy when the man was alive. Now without his farm worker’s income, it became worse. When the man lived, Fatima had a little business of her own. Diligently saving some money from her daily housekeeping allowance to purchase materials for embroidery, she would make the traditional Sindhi rilli and women’s dresses. With her husband’s death, the small income that kept the family alive was no more and Fatima was reduced to beggary.

For fifteen years the poor woman went from village to village and door to door to beg for alms. Each begging excursion lasted about a week in which she walked an estimated thirty kilometers, eating whatever was offered her and staying in whichever village night fell. At the end of her circuit she would have four to five hundred rupees with which, on the way home, she would purchase food for her daughters – food that would be just enough to last a week. And then she would set out again on her alms-seeking expedition. For fifteen years Fatima knew no respite from her difficult and tiresome routine. For fifteen years it was a rare night that this unfortunate woman slept in her own home.

Fatima says that even on her begging trips she would tell everyone that as an expert embroiderer and maker of the rilli she would much rather have people utilizing her skill than feeling sorry for her and giving her alms. She asked to be provided with raw materials and paid the usual rate for making the product. But times were hard and there was never any work. Over the years, her eye sight failed and her right arm suffered an injury rendering it unsuitable for her skill.

The cycle of beggary broke in April 2009 when SAFWCO picked her up for the TUP Program input. The subsistence allowance excluded the need to go begging permitting Fatima to tend the two goats she received as part of her first parcel. Five months later, both animals were pregnant and Fatima was looking forward to eventually being able to sell the kids duly fattened.

Fatima’s case is unique and she is a some way off from establishing a regular income. Her disadvantage being the absence of a man in the family. Were she to be given a grocery store or an embroidery kit, there would be no one to replenish her stocks. Livestock is the only option that Fatima can successfully handle. Of course there is the question of linking her with a buyer when the time comes. That is where the VDO and its affiliated Poverty Reduction Committee will come in to assist.

The Donkey Taxi Service

Want, everlasting want and hardship are no rarity in village Khamiso Khaskheli. It is the story of the lives of every single one of its inhabitants. Niamat and her husband Khan Mohammad were no different. With five children to feed, it was an endless dawn to dusk grind for the couple to keep body and soul together.

As a farm laborer Mohammad had the same story of getting work every other day and netting no more than twelve to fifteen hundred rupees a month. To augment this paltry income, Niamat too worked. She picked chili peppers for two rupees fifty paisas per one kilogram. With a household and children to take care of Niamat was only able to work half a day in which time she returned to the farm owner a bag of peppers weighing fifteen kilograms. For this labor of nearly seven hours, she would receive thirty-seven rupees and fifty paisas.

Hardly an enviable income, but the greater crunch was that this was not daily labor: the picking has to be staggered to permit the plants to produce the peppers. Consequently, Niamat had work only five or six days a month, which translated into a mere two hundred rupees. That also only six months each year – as long as the chili season lasts. Nevertheless, this good woman considered herself fortunate because on her workday she could at least return home with a handful of chilies to feed her children.

In February 2009, Niamat became a SAFWCO beneficiary and received a goat. If she and her family were pleased, their happiness was soon soured when the animal died leaving behind a kid. Despondency may have returned to the lives of these poor people had SAFWCO not intervened with an offer of a second option to the couple. A donkey cart, there being none in the village, was what Mohammad wanted. And that was what he got.

As he labored in the banana plantation or the vegetable patches, Mohammad had envied the donkey cart driver hired by the landlord to haul the harvest from the farm to the road. The driver was like a sahib who stood by watching the laborers load his cart without ever lending so much as a hand. Then he would get on and drive off. He also knew that the man collected a neat little wage at the end of his day. As much as he wanted to be the owner of similar cart, Mohammad simply lacked the wherewithal.

On his first day with the cart, his day’s work was done by noon and he had two hundred and fifty rupees in his pocket – twice as much as his day’s take as a laborer. From that day on, Khan Mohammad has never looked back. As the only cart driver, he gets work daily and is always over by midday. Then, if it is available, he goes to work as farm hand to augment his income. If not, he can always return to his village where he rents his donkey cart as the local taxi. Folks wishing to reach the road about two kilometers away happily pay for the facility where none had existed before.

From a trifling income of never more than fifteen hundred rupees a month, Niamat and Khan Mohammad have shot to what can be called affluence in their poor society. With the characteristic prudence of those who have long suffered at the hand of extreme poverty and want to make the most of their only chance, the couple are in a frenzy of building up their savings. Already a goat purchased from their own income has replaced the one that died. Others are planned.

Asked how she would measure her life since the SAFWCO intervention Niamat says, ‘Now we have three meals a day, every day and we no longer eat the chili paste with our chapatti. We can now afford vegetables or lentils daily.’

Rahima Becomes A Shopkeeper

Back in 2001, the little order in Rahima’s life collapsed when her husband was diagnosed with diabetes. Until then he sold vegetables on a pushcart borrowed from his uncle. Though his income was hardly respectable, it was just about enough to maintain Rahima and her six children in a near semblance of a life. But that did not unduly bother the family for that was how everyone else lived in village Yaqub Sheikh.

Shortly afterwards Raheema’s man underwent an operation and all but lost the use of his right arm. With no money to spare for the treatment, the family were fortunate to receive some help from Rahima’s brother in law as well as several community members. Though the operation was successful, it nevertheless put paid to the household’s meager income. Rahima put her eldest son, then a ten year-old stripling, to work. As things stand, children are exploited by employers on the pretext of ‘training’ them. Consequently, for several years thereafter the boy could only bring home five rupees for toiling a full workday in a betel leaf plantation. It was only after five yeas that his income began to average at some fifteen hundred rupees a month.

There was little cheer in Rahima’s life until she was picked out as a beneficiary for the TUP Program in March 2009. The two goats, one of them pregnant, and five chickens given her seemed the wealth of the world to Rahima as she busied herself looking after her new responsibility. Moreover, there was also the subsistence allowance that considerably augmented her son’s income and life seemed getting on to a more reasonable track.

The subsistence allowance was to dry out after a few months, therefore rather than squander it on other needs; Rahima saved twelve hundred rupees from it to set up a small soap and detergent store in her home. This was one commodity forever in demand and obtainable only from nearby towns. The business did extremely well and Rahima began to net a monthly profit of about a thousand rupees. With her husband working as her to restocking agent, Rahima has never been out of business.

For her this is only the beginning. With two goats providing milk and a kid doing fairly well, she looks forward to the time it will be old enough to dispose of. Cautious by nature, Rahima has no plans right now. She says she will consider all options when the time comes and act only in her best interest.

 
Very clearly, though Safwco has posted commendable growth in 2008 and 2009, yet this is but a small step towards fulfilling the needs of the people and the financing needs of the emerging micro-enterprises in the region.