Mi Su Khin, 48, lives with her husband and their seven-year-old daughter in Kyauk Tan Gyi village in Rakhine State. For the past ten years, the family of three has relied on Mi Su Khin’s husband’s hair-cutting business.
However, the family lived in poverty for a decade, as the hair-cutting business did not make enough money to pay for proper food and clothes.
With assistance from VisionFund’s microfinance programme, Mi Su Khin received a MMK 400,000 loan to start a small fruit-selling business. She now goes to Pauktaw to buy fruits and vegetables, bamboo shoots, djenkol beans, bananas, and chili, and travels back to Kyauk Tan Gyi by boat to sell the produce in her village. The business earns the family MMK 30,000 for every working day, although there are days during the rainy season on which farmers are not able to travel.
For every working day she travels to get produce, she spends MMK 5,000 on the boat and another MMK 5,000 on lunch. The family needs to pay back roughly MMK 50,000 each month for the loan, but the business has been a great help in generating additional family income. In fact, her husband often helps her out with the business; putting aside his own work, as fruit-selling generates more income for the family.
She mostly uses the money for household needs and savings, as well as to pay back the loan. Today, the family finds it much easier to buy healthy food and good clothes, and pay for their daughter’s school fees.
Mi Su Khin says the money from Vision Fund has significantly helped improve their quality of life, especially when it comes to providing food for the family.
She loves her daughter very much, and when asked what her seven-year-old daughter wants to become in the future, Mi Su Khin proudly said that she wants to become an artist – more specifically, an illustrator.
