Lydia Bentil

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Lydia Bentil by Christian Rural Aid Network in Ghana. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 7 months, Christian Rural Aid Network will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Lydia is 33 years old and the mother of 2 children ages thirteen and one. She has received an education through junior high school. Lydia sells canned food, vegetables, rice and gari in a neighborhood close to Cape Coast University. She purchases the rice and gari in bulk and then resells them in smaller quantities. Lydia says that she has traded many goods over the years, but found that most were not purchased quickly. Rice and gari were exceptions so she focused her efforts on selling those. Lydia used her first loan from CRAN to purchase more rice and gari in bulk. Without the loan, she would not have been able to buy the goods in larger quantities. Before taking out the loan, Lydia’s profits were 5 cedis ($5) per bag of rice or gari, and her profit is now 15 cedis per bag. She was also able to increase her weekly susu savings from 50 pesewas (50 cents) to 5 cedis.*

Lydia uses the profits from her business to pay for school fees and food for her family. Previously, she sometimes had to ask her husband to help pay the school fees, but now she’s able to do it on her own. Lydia says that the loan reduced the financial pressure in her household, but there are still many projects she’d like to undertake. Namely, she’d like to build a house on a small piece of property she inherited from her mother.

* Susu savings is an informal savings plan run by financial NGOs, credit clubs, and self-help groups. The clients pledge to save a set amount per day, and then for a fee equal to a day’s worth of savings, a collections officer visits each client on a regular basis to collect the deposit.