PROPONENT : Josely Blanca
PROJECT : Parlour renovation & equipment LOAN AMOUNT : 30,000 pesos (€480)
On the 25th of March, a PSHF team comprised of me (Richard), Phady and Analyn take the bus from Dumaguete for the 3 hour ride to the interior town of Mabinay. We get off in the barangay of Paniabonan where Lydia, our local fieldworker, is waiting for us. She leads us along the edge of a sugarcane field to the home of Daisy, one of the five loan applicants we shall be interviewing today.
Our applicants are all waiting for us on the porch of Daisy’s home. After the initial greetings, Phady starts distributing the PSHF explanatory sheet and the loan application forms. Soon, Phady is conducting our standard orientation followed by our recently added ‘health’ seminar on the subject of lifestyle and nutrition. Our applicant Zaida surprises us by correctly listing excessive intake of oil, sugar and salt as being causes of diabetes and/or high blood pressure; we subsequently discover that she is a barangay health worker!
I am assigned to interview three of the applicants and the first of these is 36 year-old Josely who is here today with her delightful 11 month old baby daughter Cathaliah. Josely is a widow having lost her husband in a tragic motorcycle accident in 2015. She is applying for a loan to enable her to make improvements to her beauty parlour and to buy additional equipment and products to enhance the services she offers to her customers. After the death of her husband, Josely went to the United Arab Emirates and worked there for 8 years. When she came back in 2023, she used her savings to build a small house and to open her parlour. Not long after her return, she came to know Clyde Jay and they became close. Clyde is the father to her daughter Cathaliah and is both a responsible father and a kindly live-in partner for Josely. He works as a welder earning 500 pesos (€8) a day.
Josely’s parlour is well situated along the highway leading to the town of Mabinay. She pays a rent of 5,000 pesos for the premises and employs a barber and a niece of hers to help her. She offers a number of hairdressing services to her female clientele including rebonding, manicure and pedicure as well as eyelash and nail extension. Her barber does haircuts for men and boys and the 60 peso (€1) fee is shared equally between Josely and the barber.
I conclude the interview with Josely by asking her about the memories that have marked her life. She tells me that the toughest period in her life was to lose her husband and then within two years to lose her father to a stroke and her brother Leo to whom she was devoted, to liver cirrhosis. As for her dreams for the future, she says she would like to have another child and of course continue to give good service to her customers in the parlour.
