Today I am going to talk about a bank made only for the bottom one percent of the women. The bank is made for helping the poor women save the money they earn for themselves.
The most amazing part of the story is that this bank is opened by a woman and is also run by women. This bank is made by a lady named Chetna Sinha.
Chetna has spent her childhood in Mumbai. She completed her education and got a degree for herself. Then one day, an incident made her built this bank for the poor women.
The case that inspired Chetna to build the bank
Once Chetna met with a poor lady who was working as a blacksmith. She was living with her family on an open street. Now to make a shelter for herself she wanted to buy a tarpaulin sheet . So she went to the bank for opening a savings account and save the money to buy a Tarpauline sheet. But the banks refused to help her because she was very poor.
What made Chetna built the bank for the poor women?
In our country only rich people can open a bank account. If you are very poor then there is no way to save money in a bank. Because previously no banks allowed poor working women to open a bank account for themselves. The poor women had no safe place to save their earnings. This made Chetna create this bank for the poor working women.
So she gathered some village women and created her own team and applied for the license for her bank. But since these women could not read or write so the license was cancelled.
Then Chetna taught these women about interest, finance and savings for 5 months and then reapplied for license.
How did they get the license?
When the investigating officers asked these poor ladies to calculate the interest on any principal amount . They could calculate them without the calculator and faster than the officers. This skill qualified these women to get the license.
How did the work progress?
Chetna taught these village ladies how to open an bank account or to make savings account and also to make business. They were taught mobile banking also.
These ladies were assured to bbe given atm cards and digital wallet and they would also get a pin number for that. But the ladies refused to use pin number. They wanted to go for biometric and thumb print.
They said that "Anybody can steal our pin number but nobody can steal our thumb" .
So Chetna told that she learned a lesson from the poor women and that is ‘ Never to give poor solution to poor people’.
Today Chetnas bank has over a 170,00 account holder and has also loaned over 50 million dollars just to help poor women to make their own earning and make their own savings.
