I vistited Mrs To Thi Huong- center 3, Ru Den hamlet, Hien Son, Do Luong, Nghe An on a torrential rainny afternoon. My first impression was a spacious house with huge yard and another dry straw store built cleanly on a high and dry place. We had an open talking with each other. Thanks to that, I understood more and felt admiring their strong will.

Born in a poor agricultural family, Mrs Huong and her husband married with no valuable assets. So as to improve family’s economy, they decided to move from growing rice into doing business with  a negligeable loan amount of just VND 2 millions. The job seemd to be smooth initially but then quickly failed, pushing her family into debts and difficulties.

In 2007, on a meeting of local WU, she knew “Affectionate Fund”, former name of TYM. The excitement and the hope for new loan source helping change her family’s economy arose on her. After the completion of the meeting, she and others still stayed for some time to learn more details. With the happiness on her heart, she discussed with her husband to immediately join TYM. He quickly denied that intention. The odd sense of failure might be the reason. He shared: “we had to work hard but gain only VND 30 thousand everyday. That amount of money even was not enough to pay for food, tuition, electricity etc. How we could pay back TYM if we borrowed from them. In addtion, money from the government was not a joke”.

She reminised with the smile on her lips. Despite of this thinking, he become even more excited to join TYM than her when officer visited and communicated clearly about TYM. With 7 years as a TYM member, it is easy to see how her family has changed.

They spent the initial loan of VND 3 million for buying a couple of sows and repairing the pigsty. On that year, she sold two generations of pigling for about VND 3 milliion. She smiled and said “ Not only weekly installments were covered but there were some money left for savings as well”

For the second round of loan, given there was no rice husking store in their hamlet, they bravely borrowed an additional of VND 9 million to purchase rice husking machine and flour milling machine. The next round of loan was used to buy an old motorbike at the price of VND 7 million. She started collecting eel, frog from local households and then provided them for restaurants.

To date, after 7 rounds of loan from TYM, her family’s economy has kept on developing.

The better family’s economy along with their obedient and well-educated children are their achievements with the helps and supports from TYM. Sharing the story with the pride on their eyes, they made me feel happy and warm on that rainny afternoon.

Life is not difficult if we know how to grasp the chances, work hardly and use the loans effectively to develop the family’s economy. The story of Mrs. Huong is not only one of the typical examples of sustainable poverty reduction thanks to the loans of TYM but also the evidence for the efforts of members and TYM in the journey reaching to new successes.

TYM- Do Luong branch