The spring planting season is a busy time on Li Furong's farm, and she doesn't have much time for chit-chat.

But in the quiet humidity of her greenhouse, with her 11-year-old daughter Liu Jinfung at her side, she takes a moment to tell the story of how all this came to be.

A few years ago, her husband lost his job when the state-owned enterprise he worked for went out of business. Unable to find sustained income in their native Sichuan Province, they migrated here to the Tumen River region, an agricultural area in northeast China, to try to make it as farmers.

"It was painful to leave our parents," she says. "But we needed to make a living for ourselves."

They had the money to build a mud-brick home and start working the land, but they lacked the capital to do much more than subsistence farming.

That's when the local women's association helped Mrs. Li apply for a small loan from Mercy Corps' PATRA microfinance program.

PATRA, which stands for Poverty Alleviation in the Tumen River Area, provides small loans - an average of about $240 per recipient - to enterprising low-income women throughout this rural part of northeast China. Most women use their loans to invest in farming or animal husbandry.

With a $365 loan from Mercy Corps, Li and her husband invested in fertilizer for her crops - and that has increased the quantity and the quality of the produce they grow on their farm. She is producing everything from cabbage to cucumbers to cauliflower and sells them to local food distributors.

"This is just the type of investment we want to make with microfinance," says Theresa Rempel, the Mercy Corps project manager who oversees the PATRA program from the regional capital, Yanji. "We identify women with energy, initiative and hope and leverage those key qualities with a little bit of money and technical support."

Through PATRA, Mercy Corps has given more than 1500 loans totaling about $450,000 to entrepreneurial women in this area since the program started in 2003.

Through PATRA, Mercy Corps has given more than 1500 loans totaling about $450,000 to entrepreneurial women in this area since the program started in 2003. The loan repayment rate among this community, Rempel points out, is outstanding.

"I would be farming whether I got the loan or not," Li says with pride. "But that investment has made my farm far more productive."

She expects to make a net profit of more than $1200 this year, and this added income will help Li make another investment: furthering her daughter's education.

Liu Jinfung starts junior high school next year and the school fees and expenses will be significantly higher. The farm's additional income means the family can afford to send Liu Jinfung to school and continue investing in the farm.

With a bright smile and a friendly wave, Li heads back to the fields to continue planting seeds.




Contributed by Jeremy Barnicle, Communications Director at Mercy Corps.

To read another Global Envision article about microfinance, see Why Focus on Poor Women and How Best to Serve Them.



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