Daw Thet Thet Mar, fish producer in Myanmar
In the suburbs of the city, the majority of residents are poor and illiterate. As a result, they have little access to paid employment. So, to survive, they set up an informal income-generating activity. But without access to credit and training, they find it hard to develop and sustain the business.
Sont Oo Tehtwin, a microfinance programme created and incubated by Entrepreneurs du Monde, was launched in 2014 to help the most vulnerable people to become entrepreneurs.
Daw is a Sont OO Tehtwin beneficiary.
“Thanks to Sont OO Tehtwin, I got into this business and now sell my products in my own shop.“
Loyal support
In 2019, Sont Oo Tehtwin gave me my first loan of 600,000 Kyats (€ 270) to start my dried fish production. With each successive loan, I was able to buy and smoke more and more fish and increase my sales and income.
A helping hand through the crisis
During the crisis, I was having difficulty selling my products and I was short of money to repay my loan. At that point, Sont Oo Tehtwin helped me a great deal: the timescales and amounts of my repayments were changed. This enabled me to get through the crisis and bring my production back up to pre-crisis levels.
A solid ambition
I now want to buy heat lamps to dry the fish during the rainy season, so that I can continue to dry enough fish despite the lack of sunlight. I’m even thinking of becoming a wholesaler: I’m steadily increasing my production and I’ll soon be able to sell some of it to food shops.
