Hard work pays for Aliness Nyongo from Chalachankhwale VSLA
Dried fish which Aliness Nyongo could buy with her savings
Mrs Aliness Nyongo is a 51-year-old married women with seven children. She comes from Nyankwatula Village and she is a member of Chalachankwale VSLA Club. She discovered the group Chalachankhwale and made fifteen new friends after being sensitised by SURCOD's Field Officer at a village meeting. She joined the group with the aim of doing something about the poverty which has tormented her since she got married. With this motivation, she started saving in May 2011. After three months, she started accessing loans from the group - ranging from MK1,000 to MK2,000 - which she used to buy dried fish from the market in Nsanje city, located around 18 km away from Chididi. She sold the fish at a maize mill close to her home. She paid back all the loans to the group and remained with MK4,000. With this money, she bought maize and resold it at the same place. After doing this business for a while, she had made MK10,000.
Aliness used part of the profit in farming and to buy kitchen ware and other household utensils. She also used some of the money to pay the bride price for her son in addition to the money made by her husband Kenson Nyongo. She has a wish to floor her house in the coming year as well as establish a big business. She however complained: "Why did SURCOD come so late? Why do good things come late? If this scheme had existed when I was a young woman, I would have achieved lots of things with my family. Asking my husband for money is history. Now we always assign tasks to each other as a family and combine our respective incomes. We are now a happy family. I wish I could be trained in tailoring. I already have the machine which we are lending to somebody. But if I learnt this skill I could do it myself. I wish SURCOD could start training us, the women and youth, in this for the sake of sustainability. I really appreciate SURCOD as well as Volkat Vision for coming up with this initiative."
Aliness used part of the profit in farming and to buy kitchen ware and other household utensils. She also used some of the money to pay the bride price for her son in addition to the money made by her husband Kenson Nyongo. She has a wish to floor her house in the coming year as well as establish a big business. She however complained: "Why did SURCOD come so late? Why do good things come late? If this scheme had existed when I was a young woman, I would have achieved lots of things with my family. Asking my husband for money is history. Now we always assign tasks to each other as a family and combine our respective incomes. We are now a happy family. I wish I could be trained in tailoring. I already have the machine which we are lending to somebody. But if I learnt this skill I could do it myself. I wish SURCOD could start training us, the women and youth, in this for the sake of sustainability. I really appreciate SURCOD as well as Volkat Vision for coming up with this initiative."
