Privacy Policy:  Contact us:  Español:

Working women in León

Doña Silvia is a 56 year-old seamstress with an old Singer sewing machine. In her humble house in Barrio Panama, she does not need a big sign over her door. People come from all over town looking for her costuras: short pants, bed-sheets and aprons. For this grandmother raising 7 grandchildren, sewing is her lifeline. When Hurricane Mitch forced her daughter to leave Nicaragua in search of a job in Costa Rica, her costuras became the only source of income in the house. Through a neighbor, she heard of loans available to poor people. After gathering a group of her neighbors, she approached the regional office of FINCA in Leon.

Panama is one of 28 new village banks that FINCA has opened with USAID funding in Mitch-affected communities this year. The goal of this micro-finance organization is job creation that allows participants’ to increase their income, boosting their self-esteem and dignity. FINCA follows the principle of village banking: a gathering of neighbors that guarantee each other’s $100 loans. They meet weekly to pay their loan, set aside some savings and learn about managing a business.

Previously, Doña Silvia could only afford to buy bits and pieces of fabrics and materials. After receiving a FINCA loan, she can buy fabrics by the yard in the Managua market. Doña Silvia sells her merchandise in all four markets in Leon and still finds time to complete 250-300 aprons per month.

Her distinctive 10 córdoba (approx. US$.80 cents) aprons have made her famous in her community. That ubiquitous working gear of laboring women in Nicaragua has become her most popular item. She is always looking for colorful laces, bright applications and other feminine details for her aprons. She even copies patterns she has seen worn in the telenovelas on television. “They come looking for my aprons because they are nicer than those available in the market,” she remarks with pride.

Another member of the Panama village bank, Doña Maura, is hard at work by 4:30 every morning. This 43-year-old single mother of five starts the day making 50 tortillas. This staple of the Nicaraguan table sells at the market for 5 reales (equiv. US$.05 cents) each. By mid-morning, she returns home to light the fire to boil vegetables for vigoron, a typical Nicaraguan stew. Cooking them will take nearly two hours, time that she dedicates to completing her housework. In the afternoon, after she returns from her door to door sales, she will make more tortillas for the dinner crowd. Throughout the day she sells candies and other items at the small pulpería she has made at her house.

Doña Maura joined the village bank when Mitch flood waters swept away the back of her house, where she did all of her cooking. The $100 FINCA loan allowed Doña Maura to restart her business and to buy firewood and ingredients for her dishes. She hopes to use money from her next loan to replace the zinc roof above the cooking area. “We just need to have a chance to keep on working for our families” she says.

Microcredit loans are giving these women the opportunity to help themselves. Like the aprons they wear, the loans are indispensable to their jobs and yet each one has been tailored to suit hard working spirit of Nicaraguan women.