Micro-Finance Scheme

The Trustees of HELP have been interested for some time in the possibility of getting involved in a microfinance scheme on the East Coast of Sri Lanka to help women in the villages develop small businesses and support their families more comfortably.

In their visit of February 2007, the Trustees met the Country Director of Relief International, a major NGO involved in micro-finance schemes, and were invited to participate in a new micro-finance scheme that is to be established in a village to be built in the environs of Pottuvil. HELP has provided funding to the scheme, which provides very small loans to 30 families at minimal interest rates. to enable them to establish and develop sustainable businesses.

On their visit in 2009 and 2010, our Trustees met Raji, the local director of the microfinance scheme, and a number of the women who continue to benefit from the scheme.  It remains an astonishingly successful project, with single mothers from the poorest villages transforming their lives and those of their children.  HELP has been able to provide funds to train new co-ordinators, essential to the establishment of new groups, and to fund the insurance policies that are required to ensure that support is maintained to families in the event of injury or premature deth of the mother.