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15
Yallingup, Western Australia
Email:
viti@bearfruit.com.au
Website:
http://www.bearfruit.com.au
Q.4 Types of Businesses:
Manufacture of cement products and goats, candle making, male goats for stud fees
(made 7,000 rupees for service fees in 1 year).
Shop front of house, commercial telephone, cows, and 2nd youngest daughter office
assistant at SNUsacc branch (6 days a week).
Candelmaking, agriculture crops, breed goats for sale, pound rice for flour, purchased
pigs (good profit) and crushing other products for colouring purposes in curries.
Carpet weaving (employees 6 local women and employer provides each with a loom.
pattern and raw materials) manufacture dugwells, buffalo.
Roadside shop & restaurant adjacent to her home and Garem board game.
Small shop, butchers, grows French beans and vegetables.
Production of money pots made out of wood for sale on highway and goat.
Cycle repair shop in built up shopping area and roadside shop alongside (couple pay
rental on land and build their own shop).
Electrical repair shop in built up shopping area.
Reka
Szalay — after her visit to the same microfinance projects (November 27
th
– December 6
th
2008) — listed in her paper
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the types of businesses in operation. The notable difference
between Szalay list and mine was the absence of the woman buying from the bigger markets and
selling in the countryside or travelling by foot to the mountains. However, Szalay spent more
time amongst the cooperative. So the woman in question may have been associated with a
group I did not visit. Another insightful observation Szalay made was regarding the 4
th
group.
They did not work as well as the others groups. Ramchandra KC believes this was due to the
group having a higher living standard to the women in the other cooperative groups.
“The Grameen Bank *model+ primarily focuses on improving women’s economic
status, which it views as the foundation on which better social and political status
can be built. The banks poverty alleviation strategy, however, is grounded in a keen
awareness of the cultural context, which conditions women’s willingness and ability
to respond to economic opportunities.”
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22
Reka Szalay, (2008), HwH Visit, Appendices (2)
23
Bernasek, (2003) p.369