Shefali Mondal aged about 30 years resides at B2739, J.J. Colony, Madanpur Khadar, New Delhi along with her husband  Bash Mondal and her children. Shefali was a simple housewife and her husband is a labourer. They were pulling their day-to-day life with very great difficulties as her husband was not getting work on a regular basis and if he did manage to get work, it was too far from their house and he was not able to reach the work place due to lack of money. It is also happened that when he did get some job, at the end of the day the employer/contractor people did not give his daily wages as they knew that Slum Colony dwellers would not raise any problem against them.  Ms. Shefali and her husband were searching here and there for their daily bread. Shefali is a good looking women and whenever she searched for a job for their daily bread, local goondas/street boys used to comment/abuse her and tried to offer her money in exchange for sharing her flesh with them. Due to this reason she was scared to even go out and she was just managing to make ends meet with great difficulty, often without food also. She was adjusting a day with a half kilogram of rice with salt only without any vegetables. But their child was not able to eat simple rice without any vegetables and insisted for some daal etc. but this poor lady could not arrange the same due to lack of money.

At this critical situation, she came to know through her neighbour, that one of the companies reached at their camp for helping the poorest people. She further got to know that the company made groups of poor ladies and distributed small amount of loans to create some income generating activities and improve their living standards. Ms. Shefali told her husband this news but her husband told her that they can not avail this loan as the company needed some security like own house etc. Ms. Shefali again enquired about the system of the company and got to know that any poor lady can avail the loan for starting any income generating activity and repayment had to be made in very small weekly installments. She immediately joined a group of ladies and availed the loan. Then she opened a small provisional store in her house. She  also arranged a telephone connection with the provision for local calls.

Now her shop runs smoothly and she earns around Rs.200  per day and she is saves around Rs.50 to 60 per day. She is repaying her loan regularly without any problem and she is very happy. 

(This article is an exact translation of the Best Entry in the "Client Story" competition).