Buvaysha Ermatova keeps her 11 children surviving and her small business in a Kyrgyz market going with microcredits, international loans for businesses too tiny to interest large banks.
Credits like these are helping once desperate women like Ermatova rise above poverty in this rundown Central Asian nation.
Just a couple of years ago, Ermatova, 50, was a jobless mother whose husband was unable to work because of severe asthma, and living in a country that can't afford to look after its poor, old and sick people.
These days, Ermatova sells matches, washing powder, toilet paper and other items at a market in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. Her small business survives thanks to microcredits _ starting with her first loan two years ago for US$80.
Ermatova learned about microcredits from fellow traders in the same market -- mostly women forced to become retail traders as inflation reduced their wages to nothing and enterprises came to a halt after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
"Do you play FINCA?" they asked each other as they chat about how things are.
FINCA, the Foundation for International Community Assistance, a nonprofit agency affiliated with the World Bank, grants microcredits to businesses like Ermatova's.
Kyrgyzstan's economy suffered a big hit as a result of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which ended the republic's large subsidies from Moscow.
According to the UN Development Program, over half of the Kyrgyz population lived below the poverty line last year. Unemployment soared from 0.3 percent in 1992 to 7.5 percent in 2000, according to the National Human Development Report for last year.
Considered to be one of the most democratically advanced among the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan has created a legal base for a market economy. But corruption and the lack of a political will to put the new laws into practice have hindered development.
Kyrgyzstan's international importance has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks as Central Asia emerged as a crucial bridgehead for operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
About 1,500 US and other anti-terrorism coalition troops are deployed at Manas airport outside Bishkek, providing support for military and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan.
Pushing reforms in Central Asia, World Bank President James Wolfensohn visited Bishkek this week as part of a five-country tour of the region.
For people like Ermatova, it's the little loans from FINCA that will make a difference in their lives.
Launched in Kyrgyzstan in 1995 with a US$6.2 million grant from the US Agency for International Development, FINCA has lent US$43 million to more than 20,000 clients, including in the most impoverished and remote areas of this mountainous Central Asian country.
Jason Meikle, FINCA's Kyrgyzstan director, said 88 percent of their clients are women who are traditionally excluded from financial services.
"FINCA believes if a woman makes some sort of profit, she will more likely take it home and make sure that her children are fed," he said.
With a 0.4 percent default rate, FINCA Kyrgyzstan is fully self-sufficient, using all interest income to reach more and more needy people -- almost all of whom have never dealt with lending institutions before because the country has no tradition of private entrepreneurship.
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