INTRODUCTION THE INTERVIEW PROFILES
STATISTICS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
CONTACT INFORMATION

Niove Maloney

Program Coordinator of ASPIRE, the Women's Opportunity Fund's Partner Agency in the Dominican Republic

Despite the fact that Niove is a University graduate, her background in a squatter family and her experience of running a business on the street gives her a great deal in common with many of the women that ASPIRE works with. She can identify with them in a way that many other people cannot. Niove is described by her co-workers in the agency as "hard-working, dynamic, a little crazy, very frank and very open." She gets along very well with the women that she works with - she is funny, has a great heart, and is a sparkling person.

"The program is magnificent and has had a great impact. People in the community are speaking to one another in a way they never have before about their lives and their needs. The best part is seeing women developing themselves, women I never thought would be able to move forward in that way. The problem has not been to grow the program but rather to direct the growth well.

"When you arrive at a house where the people live in misery and have absolutely nothing and you deliver their loans to them, you might think that they will just eat the money you've given them and not do anything worthwhile with it. To see the difference that they do make with that small amount of money is like witnessing a rebirth - it's almost as if you're helping to give birth to them. Before they had a negative attitude and a spirit of despair; now they have enthusiasm and feel capable of working.

"I never thought that it would be possible for them to start realizing their potential with such a small amount of money. When they realize their own potential, they start exploiting their own abilities instead of relying on their husbands or on their families. They realize that they can do it on their own, and it's fabulous.

Magale

In February of this year, Magale's daughter, Mayalin, fell into a vat of boiling beans and severely burned the right side of her body. Thanks to her business income, Magale had enough money to take her daughter to the local clinic. But she didn't have enough to buy the antibiotics and pain killers they prescribed. In desperation, Magale turned to her Trust Bank for help.

A spontaneous fund-raising campaign was organized for Mayalin by Mercedes, the president of the Trust Bank. Each member of the group made a contribution to help buy antibiotics. When that still wasn't enough, they raised funds from other Trust Banks in the community. Together, the women donated enough to prevent Mayalin from succumbing to infection. During the recuperation, the Trust Bank members also took turns watching over Magale's business and helping to care for her daughter. Today, Magale is putting her $100 Trust Bank loan to work by selling shoes made by another Trust Bank member, as well as selling clothes and other products. She has just become the new president of her Trust Banker way of giving back in thanks for the outpouring of support she received.

Ella Chikuraeva

Ella Chikuraeva and her three children came to Russia from Azerbaijan a year ago as refugees with nothing to their name. They knew no one, and struggled just to earn enough to buy bread.

Now Ella is a successful food vendor in the Central Market. She and a group of 44 women in the Russian city of Arzamas are making history. These women, who were among the 70% unemployed of their city, have pioneered the new Women's Opportunity Fund Doveriye Cooperative, a lending and savings group which provides working capital loans to poor women for starting businesses.

With such a loan, Ella began her business, and Doveriye gave her the training needed to run it. Ella has already hired another vendor to help her with her sales. She is the only vendor in her row who actually owns her business.

Ella beams when she talks about her love for the Doveriye Cooperative. She: describes the Cooperative as her family for sharing problems -- "a big moral and spiritual support." Ella's dream is to reach stability with her business and to hire someone else to work with her. She would like to one day open her own store.

Balbina

Shacks of scrap metal and scrap wood line a garbage-filled, ink black stream in La Cienega, a forgotten community in the Dominican Republic. Toddlers wander around barefoot and naked, many of them with distended bellies and white hair as a result of malnutrition.

In the midst of this hopeless poverty, Balbina has started a business. A pencil thin woman with bright eyes and abundant energy, Balbina used an $80 loan from the Women's Opportunity Fund to launch a business making and selling "chicharron," a fried food popular in the Dominican Republic.

Balbina's day begins at dawn. Her three children are grown and out of the house now, but her four grandchildren often stay at her home. Each morning, her husband buys meat for the chicharron, and then brings it back to the house where they deep fry it in a vat over a wood fire. In the afternoon, her husband sells the chicharron on the streets, accompanied by four young men who are glad to have work. Balbina stays at home working at her second business, making children's clothes on her treadle sewing machine.

Balbina's loan from the Women's Opportunity Fund has brought more than economic change to her situation; it has improved her marriage and family life as well. "My husband and I had 'bad blood' between us," she explains. "We were fighting tooth and nail because my husband was unemployed and we had nothing to do. Now we work together, and each of us has productive work and a way to direct our energies."

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