Bernardina Nina De Quintana is one person whose life is better because she joined Cooperative de Ahorro y Credito Incahuasi 19 years ago. To find her clean stall it is necessary to enter the market behind the store fronts in the town of Incahuasi. This shopping area is about as opposite from the big box stores or an American shopping center as can be imagined. Stalls are covered with tarps. The sounds of children combine with the barking of dogs and adults bartering for the best price on merchandise. In some cases small babies are kept under the counters. Their mothers, like De Quintana, work up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

De Quintana, the mother of two children, has arranged her hundreds of pairs of functional shoes for men, women and children, in neat rows. She says the credit union has loaned her money for working capital and for purchasing stock. The credit union also financed her home.

Her stall is at the end of the row of a popular walkway, which means she benefits from the old adage that what is important in retail is location, location, location.

De Quintana's neighbor, Paula Terrazas de Diaz, also has a stall in the same market. Her work starts well before the market opens as she makes the different juices and breads that she will sell during the day. She has her own packaging system and dips her cup into the larger containers of juice, pours the juice into plastic bags, puts in a straw and seals the plastic. The mother of three children ages 15, 23 and 25 she works within six blocks of both her home and credit union. "The credit union is very important to this community. We know it is a safe place to save and borrow. I have taken loans for my home and for capital for my store." Her workday is never less than 11 hours and her workweek is never less than seven days.

The San Mateo branch of Cooperative de Ahorro y Credito works with the rural population. Yeli Delgadillo, her husband and children live in a modest earth-colored house with a red tiled roof. Their farm stretches out behind the house with dirt paths leading to the farm buildings. A chicken house was built with a credit union loan and houses thousands of clucking white chickens. A second house, also financed by the credit union, is under construction which will allow Delgadillo to double her stock. Pigs wander around different parts of the farm, but return to their building to feed in the large tires that the family uses as troughs. Although the piglets arrive as quickly as the grown pigs, they are shoved aside and must wait until the adults finish. Before the credit union opened, Delgadillo had to travel several hours to the closest city, Santa Cruz, to do her banking, which often was in a combative mode. When the Cooperative opened a local branch, Delgadillo switched. "Life is uncertain in the countryside. The credit union understands and they help make it better," Delgadillo said.

These women's stories aren't unique, WOCCU's Public Affairs Manager Molly Schar said. She told of people taking years to build a house little by little, sometimes helped with remittances from relatives sent from other countries and credit union loans, but Maria Elena Rodriguez and her husband Jhonny Russel have been doing just that. Maria works as a pork slaughterer. Someday she knows she and her husband and their twin daughters will have their dream home.

It is easy for credit unions and people in credit union development to look at the stats, the savings, the loans, the number of members, but the real story are the people who use the credit union to build their lives, one plastic bag of juice at a time, one chicken at a time, one pair of shoes and a few mud bricks at a time.

[email protected]