English - Freedom from Hunger

Four Faces of Microfinance Impact
The following four stories represent the range of accounts we heard from mature microfinance clients. The
story of Beatriz is quite typical of the stories we heard from members of Credit with Education groups.
Ecuador
Beatriz thinks she
feeds her family a
healthy diet. They eat
salad and fruit and
fish, but also drink
colas. However, meals
are generally not
as healthy today as
what she ate during
her childhood, such
as yucca and beans
directly from the
farms, because today
everything is full of
chemicals.
Beatriz sells beer, cola, water and other items from a store in her house on
the main street in a town northwest of Guayaquil, Ecuador where people
cultivate bananas, corn, cotton and rice, and also raise cattle. Her participation
in the village bank over the past three years has helped reduce the episodes of
hunger and lack of money that had plagued her family in the past, although they still
have not overcome the difficulties of sickness and poverty.
Beatriz, 38, says the key to achieving good health and well-being is eating well. She
has participated in several discussions in her village bank about nutrition and health
and also has gotten advice from her doctors about how to control her diabetes. But
she says her diet is bad. She eats salads and vegetables sometimes, but she also eats
fried foods and foods that she knows are not healthy. She says there are months
when she goes to the doctor and controls her diabetes, and other months when
she does not.
Her family suffers from other illnesses, too. Her husband has gastritis, a disease that
is most problematic when he doesn’t eat enough. In the winter, he doesn’t have
stable work, so he has to go out day by day with his machete seeking work; when
he doesn’t have enough money, he skips either breakfast or lunch, and then his
stomach hurts. Last year he had a lot of trouble finding work and the entire family
went hungry. The family got some assistance from Beatriz’s mother, who has
since died.
The 19-year-old daughter has
good health, but is currently
pregnant. The 10-year-old son
has pains in his legs. There
have been times when Beatriz
didn’t have the money to take
him to the doctor, but when
he did have medical exams,
the doctors couldn’t identify
the problem. He can’t run or
play, and he has a lot of pain,
especially at night.
FouR FaCes oF MICRoFInanCe IMPaCT
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