Meridian Cares

Christmas is a season of gift giving.  Some gifts are much needed items, some are more fun; a few will become lifechanging.

Meridian readers know that I work in India with people affected by leprosy.  I once wrote an article for Meridian about a conversation I had with Padma, our advisor in India.  Our doctor had complained to me that the patients in our clinic never did anything he asked them to.  Consequently, their wounds were not healing up.  I could hardly believe they wouldn’t cooperate!

I mentioned this problem to Padma. Padma listened patiently.  Before responding, I could tell she was weighing how directly she ought to speak. After a pause, she looked straight at me and said evenly, “You Americans! You come to India, wanting to help. But you just give things to people. I’m sure it makes you feel good to think you’re helping, but there is a truth you’re missing here. Nothing given free has any value. Besides, every time you give something to a person, you diminish that person.”

This struck me like a ton of bricks. I had worked so hard to be able to give medical care to these needy people.  Now, here was Padma telling me that I was diminishing them with each gift. The thought practically knocked me back on my feet.

She explained to me that if I truly wanted to help them, I should make them responsible for their own well-being, but then make it possible for them to achieve it. So, we started charging the patients just a few rupees for their medical care.  We helped them to earn the money to pay this fee by helping them to start small businesses.

The most amazing thing happened. The wounds began to heal! The patients, it seemed, were suddenly doing everything the doctor told them to do. Being invested in their medical care, gave the care more value to them. They now had skin in the game. That was like a light going off in my head! I began to look at everything we were doing and holding it to this measure: nothing given free has any value.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Many organizations in the world do micro-finance for the poor by getting banks to make very small loans to the poor so that they can start small businesses.  In fact, the resulting businesses are so small they are known as micro-businesses.

We wanted to start a similar program in India with the leprosy-affected families.  We wanted to get them off the streets as beggars so they could become productive citizens of India.  Only then would they ever be treated with respect.  But we had a nearly insurmountable problem.  Because of the stigma attached to their disease, no bank in India would make a loan to a person affected by leprosy.

Because banks in India would not make a loan to a person affected by leprosy, Padma realized that if she was going to create a sustainable self-sufficiency program, she would have to get the people to create their own banks.

So, in each colony Padma started a “Women’s Self-help Group.”  Usually composed of five or six women, these groups began micro-savings.  Padma created a little “bank” for them.  Each month, each of the five women had to put in 10 rupees of her begging money (less than twelve cents).  When this group of women had collected enough money to make the first loan—for example, $5 to buy an iron (heated by  hot coals)—one woman in the group would take that money on a loan and create an ironing business.

When she had earned enough money to pay the “bank” back, the next woman took the loan and created a business.  Because this money in the “bank” belonged to the women in the group –remember, it had been their begging money—the pressure to repay it was huge.

Before long, all five women had created a small business.  They quickly became the wealthiest women in the colony.  At that time, the average beggar gained less than $15/month by begging in the streets, but the average micro-business was earning up to $100/month.  It was a HUGE difference.

At that point, all the men wanted to come join the group!  The original five women always controlled the lending in that colony.  They were the ones who scrutinized the loan applications, determined which loans to grant, and were responsible for collecting the loans.  The women let others join, including the men.  But Padma taught the women that if a man came for a loan, who they knew was brutally beating his wife—there were to be no loans given until the beatings had stopped.

Also, there were to be no loans given to men who had raped girls in the colony.  The rapes had to be stopped.  So, for the first time in history, these women were taking charge of their lives in ways they had never been able to do before!  It was transforming!

Story of Copal:

My favorite micro-lending story is about a little guy named Copal.  He wanted to start a tea business.  So, he came to the Women’s Self-help Group, and he asked for a loan of $3.  With the $3 he bought a pot and two cups.  And that was his tea business! It was successful to the point where he could pay his loan off.

Then he came to the Woman’s Self-help Group and said he needed an $8 loan to buy an old beat-up bike.  He said if he could get the tea out to the workers in the field, they would pay him more.  So, they gave him the loan and he quickly paid that loan back.

He continued to take out more loans as he built his business and now, he has a business that supports his family.  One time he was asked, “Copal, now that you have this business and you no longer beg, how is your life different?”  I thought he’d say something like, “Well, I get to eat every day now,” or “now my children get to go to school.”  Something like that.  But that’s not what he said.

He said, “When I used to beg in front of the shop in the village, the shop owner would come out and curse at me and threaten me until I moved away.

He continued, “But now I supply tea to that shop.  When I come now, the owner sets a seat and offers me tea.”  So, the dignity he gets from being a productive member of society— to him, is more important than even eating every day.  It’s such a big deal.  We don’t realize how important dignity is.

Copal taught us about the hunger for respect. His wife became a painter in the Bindu Art School that we support and earned money for their family in that way.  Theerthi, their daughter, attended the Rising Star Outreach school.  Upon graduation she was accepted to prestigious government nursing school.  A whole family was changed—beginning with a $3 loan!

A  Calf Named Becky Douglas:

A fun story: one of the ladies that we worked with was named Saral.  She took out a $300 Loan and got a milk cow.  We had her cow artificially inseminated.  Her cow had a male calf, and she named it Becky Douglas!  Here’s a picture of me in India .  . .

A Reason to Wake Up Every Day

Another lady took out a similar loan for a milk cow.  Her cow ended up having twins.  Her husband said, “You give one of those calves to me.”  She said, “No, No, No, I’ll give it to you on loan!”  So, she gave her husband a loan.  Now they have three cows.  Between them and all the money they have made, they have bought their own house and own their own land.  It’s so cute to see them working together, where before she was dominated by him.  It’s pretty exciting to see what self-sufficiency does to people.  For one thing, it gives them a reason to wake up every day.  There’s now meaning in their lives.

Grandmother with Cow, Now Served First in her Family

We have another lady in that same colony who also took out a loan for a milk cow.  The cow started producing milk.  She was now making more money than anyone else in the family.  She was the  grandmother.  In India, food is LIFE.  You and I probably take food for granted, but in India, food is life and death.  The way it sometimes works in some homes, particularly out in the country, is that if there’s food, the man eats.  If there’s more food, then the children eat.  If there’s more food left over, then the wife gets to eat.  If there are any scraps left over, the grandmother gets to eat.

Most of the men die before the women.  An old grandmother is not a welcome thing in most homes.  This woman was stick thin because she rarely got any scraps. Now, though, that she provides the income for the family, she’s the first person that’s fed.! It seems like such a small thing, but her eyes shone as she told us, “I am the first person that is fed in my family”.  What a wonderful thing it is to be able to give a person a sense of who they are.

We had another woman who took out a loan for a milk cow.  Her cow must have been blessed by the gods, because it subsequently had 5 female calves! Her husband sold one of the calves and bought an old beat-up auto-rikshaw with the money.  He started a transportation service between leprosy colonies.

This was a big deal, because before this time it was very difficult for a leprosy patient to visit his parents, or siblings in another colony.  People affected by leprosy are not welcome on public transport.  Of course, almost none of them have cars.  They typically have damaged feet from the disease and so it’s very difficult for them to even walk to another colony to see their family members.  Consequently, this man’s transport business quickly became very successful.

He took his earnings and bought a second auto-rikshaw and hired another man in the colony to be a driver.  Along with the money earned from the auto-rikshaws, he asked us for a loan to buy a 20-seater mini-bus! He wanted to start public transportation between cities that had no bus service.  We had to get that money from a regular bank in our own names.  His transport business turned out to be another successful venture!

The next time we came to India, he asked us for a loan to buy a truck.  He wanted to start a trucking business!  In the meantime, his wife had started raising turkeys.  Their financial situation had changed entirely.

It was remarkable to see how quickly the ideas of free enterprise were adopted by this family.  Success breeds success!

When we reach out to help others, we often erroneously think that we need to give them something. For some, the truth is that the best gift is to give them the capacity to reach out and lift themselves, and then be able to be the one lifting others. This is the gift of dignity.  These are the gifts that are life-changing!