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In four short months they have mixed our help with their strength and are now debt free.
Quite often families facing emergencies are forced to borrow money from loan sharks at extremely high interest rates that can cripple a family with debt for years to come.
Already, in the villages where the VSLA has been established, three families have been saved from needing to go to loan sharks to borrow money, at 20%/month.
Imagine how you would feel, living in a tiny bamboo hut on stilts, above a mosquito infested swamp/sewer, in a crowded village strewn with refuse, where you live at the mercy of the landlord, who is also your boss, barely able to feed the children you already have, to find out you were expecting another.
In another time or place, this mother could have been treated another way; she and her husband may have been pressured to give their child to a home where he might lay on a cot for hours, unattended. This is the worst side of the previous, institutional model of care for families in poverty. This is what The Charis Project seeks to prevent.
Over the past 4 years, our projects and team has grown from 4 people to a team of 33 people from three different countries, speaking 12 different languages with 8 different projects directly engaging and helping over 150 families per month and ready to reach more.
We had become too big to be a subsidiary of another foundation any longer.
When men, women, and children live in families, they are experiencing justice and providing justice to others. This justice spreads, because as they gather in a community and the communities form the state, everyone has a stake in doing what is best for the least powerful among them and giving everyone his due, which is justice.
This process of supporting families is messy, and hard. Not all stories end well. Often we meet someone in need too late. We can’t undo the damage done to a baby by malnutrition or violence. But we walk with the parents through their current reality and provide support for the present situation. And we keep looking to identify those most at risk, to find them soon enough, to prevent what can so easily be prevented.