I love the diversity of South Africa.
So much money and capacity flows through this country,
yet it seems to all stick in the first-world part of South Africa.
Poverty in South Africa is heartbreaking.
It's life-changing.
To see how people live on a daily basis, the struggles and the difficulties,
there was no understanding of tomorrow.
It's only about today because I only have enough for today.
Our mission is to empower the poor,
to provide them with training and support to allow them to take their first business loan
and then to stay with them and watch them and help them to succeed.
That's what we do.
My name is Chula Simelani.
I am a self-employed, I'm a single mother.
I'm staying in my home, I'm working in my home.
And I love my business.
I love it. It's in me. I think I'm blessed with it.
I used to keep on praying that one day I'm going to have a boutique, my own boutique at town.
It's my dream.
It's my talent and I've never been to school.
It's giving me everything, whatever I want. I do it.
We believe that poor people are as gifted as those people we may say they are educated,
but they haven't had opportunities in life.
Pugamoney provides a held up.
Provide credit, provide training, as well as ongoing support to women in rural communities
as a way of trying to empower them to be self-sustainable.
Pugamoney is a statement. It's a statement that I care.
It's an organisation founded by Mark and Shirley Tucker
to improve the lives of women and to eradicate poverty in South Africa where we can.
We do that through the issuing of micro-finance to poor women and exclusively women
that are willing to help themselves.
In many instances, our clients are women who are heading households
without the father figure in the home, and we have children.
I have to put food on the table. I have to cook them.
Yes, we do.
When I was in school, I never went to school.
I didn't want to go to school.
I didn't want to go to school.
When I went to school, I didn't want to go to school.
I didn't want to go to school.
I didn't want to go to school.
There's a situation that we got hold of
where women were actually eating toothpaste
just so that they could have a meal.
We didn't want to eat, but the kids must eat.
Women are the bedrock of our society.
Paramany believes that through a woman, a lot can be changed.
So we believe that if you give a woman something, she will share with the whole family.
I haven't been to a single centre client meeting where there aren't kids, young kids.
So it's either mothers or grandmothers running a business and looking after their kids.
They have to be.
These people are not poor because they chose to be poor.
Sometimes it's a circumstances that they did not choose to find themselves in.
We have those minds, we have those ideas, but we don't know where to go with those ideas.
With the background that we have in Africa where things seem to favour mostly men
women don't really get to benefit that much.
They typically unbend and cannot get access to find themselves any other way.
Some loans I didn't qualify.
In South Africa, for you to be able to go and get a loan at a bank, you need to have a paycheck.
I'm self-employed, you see.
So when I go out for a bank, I'm looking for a loan.
Why is your pay slip?
No pay slip.
I don't want to go to the toilet, maybe I'll play games out.
I don't want to go to the toilet, maybe I'll play games out.
We at Pagaman, we give them a lifeline.
We give them small loans to fund their small business.
I don't want to go to the toilet, maybe I'll play games out.
The interests are not that much, I am able to manage.
Well, our payment rate is 98% or above, often it's 99%.
You meet clients in their working environments, in their homes, in their villages,
and get to see how hard they work, the conditions they work under,
and the selfless way in which they work to improve the lives,
not just for themselves but for their families, is really uplifting.
Beyond their willingness and their desire to succeed, which everything starts there, is training.
We provide them support, make sure that we help them understand business principles.
Centres are a place for skills training.
It's a place for us to train but also for our clients to train themselves.
When we issue a loan to them, we don't ask for collateral.
The guarantee that we have is the group guarantee.
Because I mean, I will not be able to take it for the money alone.
It's for the money needed to be a group.
Who are holding themselves accountable.
And that group must be people that will trust them.
One person looking at another person and saying,
if you get in trouble, I'll help you.
People that you have to speak to them, encourage them, you can do this, you can do this.
The loan that the client pays back, the money that the client pays back, it helps another client.
That's a thing that I really appreciate more than anything is that they're doing it themselves.
It's mine. I'm proud of it. And I like it.
I love to do this job. I'm proud, definitely.
The most rewarding part of my job, but waking up every day,
knowing that there is a life out there that I'm affecting just by sitting here on this desk
and doing the administrative role, the best that I can.
We've got 90 development loan officers, 16 branch managers,
three regional managers serving 12,000 clients.
For me, being at Pacaman is more than just a job.
People are doing it because they want to do it. There's heart involved.
There's honesty and integrity.
The Pacaman staff, they are so very good.
They are always laughing. They are always encouraging us.
They are always pushing us. They are always helping us a lot.
Each week, we receive applications from an average of 150 groups,
which equates to 750.
This past week, it was 900 women who applied for loans.
We still have a lot to do.
Donor support is so important to us because we're a public benefit organization,
which simply means that we don't have a profit motive.
Out in the field, we experience a number of costs.
Giving loans to clients, getting them to repay those loans so you can lend to other clients,
sounds really simple.
I was gobsmacked at the amount of systems, processes, time, effort, people, skills,
going to making Pagamani work.
But there's never enough fees to cover what we do.
At the moment, we're 70% sustainable, which means that our clients
give us 70% of what Pagamani needs to run Pagamani.
Experience showed me that small loan can make a big impact in a person's life.
I also know for which manière that phones might come.
They can report it to me on the mail,
send it to Pagamani and tell me to return until 5 pm.
I don't contact the number of people who suffer strenuously,
they may be phoned and then sent before 7 pm
and in till 9 pm, they return home,
and this is what Pagamani is for me.
I'm plowed off my son,
and because now with Pagamani, he's a lawyer now.
He's working now.
I've seen people who've been able to build their homes
and who've told me that they were hungry
and they would have to go and talk to their neighbours
and say, please, can I have some food?
And now they don't have to do that.
My hopes and dreams for Pagamani is to see Pagamani
reaching 100,000 clients.
That will be a dream come true.
Really make such a difference in their lives so quickly,
so well, give them dignity.
We have dreams and ideas.
I think if we give Pagamani money,
Pagamani will be able to help us as communities.
People often say, what's your greatest success?
And now when I look back, I say, actually,
our success is quite small.
It's just happened 38,000 times.
And there's 38,000 women in this area
who have had a loan and have had a chance
to change their life and follow their dream.
It's a funny thing because I went to a centre meeting
and these clients just started singing this Pagamani song.
I turned to the branch manager and said,
Rose, what's going on here?
I said, Mark, all I can tell you is that this is a song
that they've now converted into a Pagamani song.
So all the way through Pagamani, all 12,000 clients,
they know the plague, they know the Pagamani song,
gives us a sense of we are one, which is great.
This music has really blessed us.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to sing this song.
I'm not sure if I'm going to sing this song.
