Life Savings Doubled

27/8/2014

Nak Vorn has doubled her life savings doing 35 hours' work as a microfranchisee! Nak is a 36-year-old mother of four from Prey Svob village. In her first chicken-raising cycle she earned an amazing profit of US$32.49 for one extra hour's work a day. Before joining our programme, her total life savings amounted to US$16.00. Half of Nak's US$32.49 profit is reinvested into her business, the other half she can spend on her family.

Previously, her main income source was from growing vegetables seasonally for six months of the year. For this she earned around US$1.35 per day for eight hours' work. As a result, her family has gone without regular protein, sanitation, or clean drinking water in the past.

Life savings nearly doubled - Ouk Chhav

Ouk Chhav is in our second microfranchisee group and earned US$48.23 (NZ$57.00) in his most recent chicken-raising cycle (after expenses). He achieved this working approximately one hour per day. Before joining the programme his main income earning activity was growing vegetables on one hectare of land, which only earned him around US$1.25 per day. His total life savings before joining up amounted to US$25.00, so the extra $48.00 has also nearly doubled his life savings and will help him provide for his family.

To find out more on how to be part of this program, please click here.

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We founded Catalyst Microfranchising after living in South East Asia and seeing first-hand the daily struggle the ultra poor face in meeting their basic needs.

Although Cambodia is a fast-developing, dynamic country, 57% of Cambodians still live on less than US$2.00 per day, and 90% of Cambodia's poor live in rural areas which lack even the most basic of infrastructure, a legacy of three decades of civil war and unrest.

After running a small-scale microloan programme in 2009, we found that partipants struggled to pay back even small microloans. So we abandoned our assumptions about what the ultra poor need, and conducted interviews with people who earn less than $2.00 per day, to find out their perspectives and their actual needs.

We then developed a locally-led programme which focuses on the needs and wants of the end-user, the microentrepreneur. Fundamentally the ultra poor need profitable business ideas, skills training and help accessing markets to be successful.

Our ultimate goal is to strengthen rural communities by creating opportunities for the ultra poor to move up the economic ladder, above the poverty line.
Gerard & Hana Wakefield