Not Prepared For Unexpected Pecuniary Crisis?

There are times when you face unanticipated pecuniary crisis and you find yourself just not prepared to tackle it. Things become inferior when you have to resolve it that very day.

This could be anything from a medical crisis to repaying insurance or even paying your child’s tuition fees. If you look out for money assistance it is likely to make you feel dismayed as getting funds at such short notice might not help.

Same day loans can be a great assist for you if you are looking for financial assistance instantly.

Here within a few hours of receiving your application lenders process your loan and you would get the loan total transferred to your bank account. You are free to pay out this cash for any purpose you wish.  There is no restriction on loan total usage.

You have to evaluate your requirements and also your capacity to pay back and then apply for same day loan. You would be given adequate time to plan your repayment. You do not have to fill in several papers since the entire process is on web.

Without being asked for your credit record you can apply for this loan as lenders here do not hold out any credit check for the borrowers. You do not have to pledge any collateral or guarantee  as well since this loan is unsecured in nature.

Easy application process and Instant approval can assist you retain your peace. You are not even asked to fax any papers or documents.

If you desire to apply for this loan you can login to lender’s webpage. You will need to fill in a simple and quick online application form. It has few essential questions and only upon answering those correctly you can submit your request.

This application form is completely free of cost for you. You need to understand the loan procedure and other formalities correctly so that you know what you are doing. Lenders are available around the clock so if you have any question you can contact them same day.

My Top 10 Tips to Live Below The Line

One week today the Live Below The Line challenge begins!!! 

 

And for those of you who are like me and slightly worried about whether you have the creativity and knowledge to eat adequately on just £1 a day. Or wonder how you are going to raise both awareness and funds for your chosen charity, I have compiled a list of TOP TEN TIPS to help you (and me) take on the challenge!





First a recap …

What is Live Below The Line & Why Do It?

Live Below the Line is an innovative awareness and fundraising campaign by the Global Poverty Project that challenges people to live on £1 a day for 5 days.

It is important because 1.4 billion people worldwide are currently living on just that and tonight 900 million people will go to bed hungry – this inexplicable injustice needs to be shouted about and charities like CARE international and initiatives like lendwithcare.org need support to keep on tackling such unfair poverty.

So with much ado here are my TOP TEN TIPS:

1. Use the Live Below The Line recipe book https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-guidance. These recipe ideas actually look pretty tasty and the costings are all done for you. I for one will be trying the chapatti jam pancakes!
2. Plan. If you are anything like me you probably think about what you are going to eat five minute before you go and buy it – this will not do! Not only will a meal plan ensure you have enough money to eat sensibly the whole week but it will also make you realise just how time consuming it can be working out what/how to eat with so little money. The Live Below The Line team has come up with some fab examples here https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-guidance 
3. Avoid eating meat. Meat piles on the pennies and comes with an environmental cost so why not give it a miss for a week. 
4. Drink a lot of water. This can keep hunger at bay as well as remind you how lucky we are to have access to clean, drinkable water every day. 
5. Make things from scratch & save money – bread, pizza bases, sauces (bear in mind you need time to prepare these) 
6. Get your friends involved & raise money. I will definitely be organising a Dine Below The Line night for me and my friends. Ask guests to donate the money they would have spent if you had gone out for a curry/pizza https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-dine 
7. Bring the challenge to work lunchtimes. Ask people to bring a dish that they have prepared for £1 or less and see who shows the most creative flair in the kitchen. More ideas for lunchtimes can be found here https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-guidance 
8. Donate what you would normally spend on coffee in a week to the challenge & boost your fundraising figure. 
9. Organise a £1 cake sale https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-guidance 
10. Shout (and moan) about what you are doing & encourage friends/family/colleagues to donate and help you spread the word. There are lots of ways to do this using social media & LBTL has prepared some great, ready-to-use resources https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-guidance

There is still time to sign-up to the challenge and raise awareness about global poverty. Money raised through sponsorship will help fund loans to lendwithcare entrepreneurs, which, once repaid, will be automatically donated to CARE to help fund our live-saving work around the world.  Sign-up here https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-lendwithcare

By Nancy Thomas, Lendwithcare.org Executive

Rice production in Cambodia: the poor farmer’s perspective

Rice farming in Cambodia can be a tough and uncertain business. Rainfall is highly erratic, both drought and floods being regular occurrences, land is often infertile or under-nourished and investment in new farming systems and technology is minimal. 

Yet approximately 60% of the Cambodian population rely on agriculture (mainly rice production) for their livelihoods and unsurprisingly the vast majority of those are living on less than $1.25 a day. Despite government commitments to expand rice production and increase the country’s export capacity, the reality for the majority of farmers is stagnant growth and an uncertain future. Which is why, on a recent trip to Cambodia, I was keen to find out why so many of the entrepreneurs we have supported through lendwithcare.org are sticking to rice farming.

After all, Cambodia’s national economy has started to grow in recent years and industries other than agriculture are expanding at impressive rates. The garment and tourist industries, for example, have been increasing by an enormous 20% each year for the last two years. And the general population, no longer plagued by political oppression and war, are free to move both within and outside Cambodia. However, as the farmer-cum-taxi driver who took me to my hotel in Phnom Penh explained, urban migration is not only financially and emotionally tough but also unsustainable since the number of jobs available (and places to sleep) come nowhere near to meeting the demand. So for those who choose not to migrate, (around 80% of the population), their only goal is: “how to live better lives as farmers” (Pov Sok – lendwithcare entrepreneur).

One significant constraint for the vast majority of poor rice farmers is lack of capital. Without sufficient capital or access to affordable lines of credit, poor rice farmers find it virtually impossible to move beyond subsistence farming to producing a marketable surplus.  This is where the services of local microfinance organisations, if they provide affordable and effective services, can play a significant role in improving the lives of rural Cambodians.  These services become even more significant and crucial to rural development when we consider how little the Cambodian government actually dedicates to the growth of agriculture -in 2010 for example they committed only 1% of the national budget to an industry that over half the population depend on.

As I met 21 of the Cambodian entrepreneurs (15 of whom were rice farmers) lendwithcare.org has provided a line of credit to I noticed the first thing a Cambodian farmer will tell you when you ask them how their business is doing is to talk about the rainfall. A shortage of irrigation systems means the majority of rice production in Cambodia takes place during the country’s monsoon season (wet season rice farming) therefore putting the success of rice production predominantly in the fate of the gods – which climate change has made even more unpredictable. Interestingly however, the next thing all the entrepreneurs I met went on to tell me was how they were going to expand and increase production. They described with hope how they planned to buy better quality seeds, expensive (but essential) fertiliser and insecticide, more land, and essential machinery. All with the credit that was now available to them through the local microfinance organisation.

Take Sophan, for example, a female rice farmer who lives in the lowland plains of north-western Cambodia, who described to me in great detail the back-breaking work involved in preparing her four hectares of land for rice cultivation. Sophan, who is lucky enough to be able to produce wet and dry season rice (she captures receding rainwater to produce during the dry season) explained that without sufficient capital it is virtually impossible for her and her husband to prepare their land on time or plant enough rice to produce a marketable surplus.

A rice field needs to be prepared (soil ploughed, water pumped in and/or out, fertiliser and insecticides manually applied, and weeds manually removed) and rice crops planted (this is always done manually by either transplanting from a nursery or scattering). And although some farmers will have enough money saved from the previous season to complete a part of this cycle, insufficient capital often means land has too much water or not enough since farmers cannot afford the machinery or labour required to pump in and out water or land is un/in-sufficiently fertilised. Sophan said that when capital is short in her household they are not able to prepare all their land and therefore produce lower yields. With the credit she is able to access through the local microfinance institution, which is then refinanced by lendwithcare lenders, Sophan told me they have been able to produce on all their land and she now hopes that as their farming becomes more efficient they will be able to purchase more land.

Similarly San, another female farmer I met in Battambang province, told me access to an affordable line of credit had enabled her to buy essential fertilisers and insecticide as well as diesel to operate her water pump. She said without these essential farming inputs her land would not be anyway near as productive. In fact she told me that simply having decent and sufficient fertiliser meant she could double her yield. And Khon another entrepreneur who told me she was able to purchase a small fishing boat with credit when her rice paddies were destroyed in the terrible floods of 2011 and had used the boat to generate an alternative source of income for her family by fishing on the flooded land.

Of course, access to credit is not the only answer to rural development in Cambodia. The terrible floods in 2011 remind us that natural disasters have a disproportionate and devastating effect on the poor. However, credit and the power it has to help those living on low incomes to move just that little bit beyond pure subsistence farming can definitely help (even when disasters strike). Sophan, San & Khon told me that even though farming was tough and their incomes were sometimes unpredictable they would not change what they do. Perhaps because they felt rice farming was all that they know or because they felt there were no opportunities for them in the growing cities. I do not know. However, they were all adamant that their children would not become farmers and with the education they could now afford to give them they had different opportunities available to them – and without exception all three women had achieved this goal.   

 

By Nancy Thomas, Lendwithcare.org Executive

A woman to put 26.2 miles in perspective

Last March, I made a nervous phone call to a woman called Remzija, in rural Bosnia & Herzegovina. Last June I went to Benin to meet some inspirational entrepreneurs.
And in 2 weeks I’ll be running 26.2 miles through central London.

What do these three events have in common?  Lendwithcare.org of course!


 Working for Lendwithcare last year was truly a privilege, not to mention the opportunity to do so with their microfinance partners in Benin and Togo, where some of the entrepreneurs are based. Having supported CARE since a man knocked on my door when I was 17, it was tremendous to see face-to-face that they do what it says on the tin.

Dignity -  That’s it for me, in a word. It’s enough to sign me up to eight months of training, dieting and tired legs – not to mention my personal fundraising target of £3000.

CARE International don’t spend tons of money on advertising but they’ve been quietly getting on with the task of tackling global poverty for 68 years. Dignity and empowerment is at the heart of everything they do.

But back to Remzija Delic.  18 years ago, she lost her husband; he was murdered in the Srebrenica massacre. When she returned home, she had to rebuild her life from scratch – in a country where women’s rights have been forgotten. The loans she has received from Lendwithcare have helped her to do this and even to start a small business, you can see her profile on the website. In perspective, running 26.2 miles is a pitiful challenge.

I interviewed Remzija  last year for a piece I was writing. If you need a reason to go to my fundraising page, don’t read my quibbles about putting one foot in front of the other, (although if you really want to, you can, this is my blog) read more about Remzija Delic' story  in the summary below or the full version in The Guardian.

The Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina

“On July 11^th 2012, Remzija Delic will see her children again. For most of them it will be a long journey home - from Austria, the Netherlands and the USA. The family left after the war but every year they return to see their mother and remember their father. He was murdered with 8000 others in 1995, in a massacre later described by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as the worst crime committed on European soil since the Second World War.

In 2002 Remzija returned to rebuild what remained of the family home in Potocari, a small village nestled in misty mountain shadows, 6km north-west of the town of Srebrenica.  She returned alone, without a family and without a job.

When the Bosnian war ended in 1995 the Dayton Agreement was signed and the conditions for a multi-ethnic state were enshrined in the constitution. Today in Bosnia & Herzegovina, the institutional set-up remains the same.  Maintaining equal ethnic representation of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs has been paramount to the peace-building process in Bosnia & Herzegovina. But in the meantime, has equal gender representation and the rights of ordinary women been neglected?

The constitution of Bosnia & Herzegovina abides by the highest level of internationally recognised human rights and explicitly recognises the principle of gender equality. In 2003, the Gender Equality Law was passed to advance gender equality at every level of the country's administration.

Many laws were amended to bring them into line with the new legislation. Legislation, it seems, is not enough. In March 2012, Amnesty International published a report criticising the government for failing to honour its commitments to survivors of wartime sexual violence. It also commends the work of women's NGOs in Tuzla. One such organisation is Snage Zene, (Women Power).

With long-term unemployment such a chronic problem, self-employment can seem like the only viable option. Yet the 2009 UNDP National Human Development Report advises that starting a business in Bosnia & Herzegovina is more difficult than in any other country in the region.

"It comes down to tradition" declares Seida Saric, Director of Women for Women International in Bosnia & Herzegovina. "Our country has come from socialism. Entrepreneurship is not acceptable, and certainly not for a woman. If a woman starts a business that fails, the entire community will give her a hard time. Women are scared to death of failing. Legally, it is difficult, but socially, it is completely unacceptable."

When help arrives, it comes from women's NGOs. "We are playing the role of the state" remarks Seida. The organisation runs a programme that provides women with the business training and financial support they need to maintain their own economic livelihood and practise their rights.

Outside Remzija's house, a space has been cleared. It is reserved for the people who come to visit. But the people she reserves this space for do not come to socialise; they come to organise. She hosts community group meetings and they lobby the council for change.

In 2006, she completed Women for Women's programme. Today, she has two greenhouses in which she grows an array of flowers, vegetables and herbs that she sells in her local community. Remzija remains optimistic about the future. "The war is still part of the present but things are changing. Women are becoming politically active."

By Emma Howard