Case Study :- SUR

When Meera’s first loan cycle was finishing, she took out a second
loan of  Rs.30,000 to expand her income generating
activities further. She bought  buffaloes
this time, and used her solar lamp when she was feeding the  buffaloes every morning before 6 am.

Seeing so many uses for solar lamps, she applied for a SUR loan
so that she  could get two more solar lamps.
Now she uses one for her shop and the  second
lamp when she is feeding the buffalos in the morning and evening.  Her children use one lamp for their studies
and now they can be independent  and
study longer in the evenings. Using solar saved Meera a monthly  kerosene cost of Rs. 400 per month, and at the
same time her family’s  quality of life improved;
her children no longer had to breather the toxic  fumes emitted from kerosene lamps and she did
not have to worry about the  lamp falling
over and burning down the house.

 

 

This case study takes a glimpse into a small village known
as Jakua in  Chhapra, Bihar. The main industry
in the village is agriculture, with various  crops cultivated through the seasons. In this village
lives a Saija client name seema devi. 

A typical day in the Jakua village starts at 5 in the morning during the  summer. Men go out to the fields for work while
the women begin their daily  chores. Seema
Devi’s husband works in the paddy fields of their landlord.  The family’s house has a storage area attached
to the house to keep crops  to be processed.
Seema and her husband have three children and her  husband was the primary breadwinner, but times
were tough as crops in the village were frequently
stolen. Seema tried to earn extra income by making pickles to sell, but dreamed of earning more money.
Her dream was to own  cattle which would provide
her family with milk and allow her to make milk  products to sell.

She did not expect this dream to be realized in Jakua, until
the spring of year  2016 when a friend told
Seema about Saija. She realized that with a loan  from Saija she would be able to buy cattle. Seema
formed a group with her  neighbors and took
loan from Saija. The day Seema saw her future brighten  was a memorable one, and Seema worked fast through
her morning chores  to get to the Chhapra
branch by midday to receive the loan. Seema remembers the clock ticking 11 am … she and fourteen
other women walked  inside the Chhapra branch
to receive their loans and they all emerged with  big smiles on their faces. 

Two days later Seema bought her first cow. She milks it every
day, and now sells milk to nearby homes. One day, Seema’s loan officer Pankaj announced another
product Saija offered  with financing – a
solar lamp – he explained the benefits of solar to the women group members. Many members of the group were
eager to buy one in order to  have light after
dark, since the village experienced frequent, prolonged power  cuts.

Seema used an energy loan from Saija to purchase a solar lamp
and immediately saw benefits from it: her
children could study after dark, they had  reliable lighting even during storms and power
cuts during the windy monsoon  season. Perhaps
the greatest benefit for Seema and her neighbors was that  having solar lights on at night kept the village
safe from robbers.