Surbir Tamang

Surbir is a 52- year-old man from Jhapa in Eastern Nepal. He has recently moved into the Imadol district with his extended family of nine in a rented room. They were very poor when we first met him.

ACC initially decided to provide a scholarship to one of his children after coming to know their circumstances. In his home village, Surbir and his wife used to rent land for farming. They had to pay rent for the land as well as giving a percentage of the harvest to the landlord so they couldn’t earn enough to support their large family. It was very hard to pay school fees and the medical costs for the family. The situation went from bad to worse when Surbir’s wife had an accident and broke her spine. Surbir couldn’t continue the farm work on his own so their condition became desperate. It was then that they decided to move to the city in search of work.

Soon after ACC became involved with the family, Surbir joined the Shanti Savings Co-operative, one of the four co-operatives that ACC supports. After a few months he took a loan of 20,000 NRs ( about £130) provided by ACC’s Micro-Finance Himalaya scheme. From this money he has brought a cart and started to sell second-hand clothes on the street. Slowly, he progressed to selling vegetables, biscuits and chocolates from the cart and was able to successfully repay the loan after several months. He took another loan from Shanti Savings and started to run a fabric shop. Now the family’s life style has been totally changed. They are very happy and he is still saving every month with Shanti. He is very grateful to MFH for supporting people like him!