Fatou Sarr

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Fatou Sarr by Caurie Microfinance, a partner of Catholic Relief Services in Senegal. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 months, Caurie Microfinance, a partner of Catholic Relief Services will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

As a Kiva Fellow, I recently had the opportunity to visit Fatou in the village of Mbousnack, which is in the northern part of Senegal, less than 100km from Dakar.

Fatou is very happy with Caurie. With her loan she not only bought supplies for her her retail business but she also bought a cow, raised it, and resold it. With the money she has made over the course of several loans, she has been able to contribute to household expenses, and to buy a bed.

Below is a short video of Fatou talking about her loan in Serer, one of Senegal’s most widely-spoken languages.

In fact, the visit to Mbousnack was so interesting that I wrote a blog post about it. To hear – and see – more about Mbousnack, see my post on the

Kiva Fellows Blog.

Please note that Fatou is not delinquent on her loan. An administrative error resulted in many of Caurie’s loans appearing as delinquent on the site. This is not the case in reality. All of Caurie’s loans that are currently posted on the Kiva website have a fixed term of six months, as noted in the loan description. Fatou is due to pay her entire loan, plus interest, shortly, but no payment has been requested from her yet. Apologies for the confusion.

About Caurie Microfinance

Based in Thiès, Senegal, Caurie Microfinance is a not-for-profit independent microfinance institution that was launched jointly by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Caritas. It operates agencies in three primary regions within Senegal: Thiès, Kolda, and Zinguinchor, with smaller branches in other regions as well. Caurie loans only to women. To meet its objective and serve its customers, Caurie’s methodology is based on the creation of organized, structured and communally governed groups called “village banks.” These groups are made up of an average of 50 self-selected women from local community groups. The banks are based on the principles of participative management and collective guarantees. Learn more about Caurie Microfinance.