Prosperity Rings News & Highlights

Financial Statistics

We know of no other investment that grows so vastly and impressively than your funds that revolve continually over the years. These graphs demonstrate that growth.

View the 2015 Financial Report

December 6 2016

India Tour with Prosperity Rings in May 2017

ARTICLE FOR INDIA TOUR and ITINERARY

The resplendent and magnificent Thrissur Elephant Festival in early May is one of the adventures of the 13 day tour. Touring Rotarians and others will also see the results of our contributions as they visit and acknowledge firsthand the thrilling accomplishments of formerly destitute women who turn micro credit loans into their own enterprise. We will be accomplishing a …

September 18 2016

Tour of India and Prosperity Rings’ Enterprises

“The resplendent and magnificent Thrissur Elephant Festival in early May is the focal point of the 13 day tour. Touring Rotarians and other donors will also see the results of their contributions as they visit and acknowledge firsthand the thrilling accomplishments of formerly destitute women who turn micro credit loans into their own enter-prise. Tour members will be requested to teach a simple craft, trade, …

May 20 2016

RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND WINNING ENTERPRISES

An International Women’s Day celebration, conducted by SRIA Musiri in March 2016 was attended by 128 of SRIA’s 750 members. Prof. Ramesh Babu and Prof. Ratika from the Government Arts College highlighted the role of women in the society, the rights of women, and the schemes available from the government along with trades and business techniques.

SRIA borrowers organized a mini exhibition to showcase micro …

February 10 2016

Star Entrepreneur of 2015: Manju

Manju, 44, was born into a poor family with five brothers and four sisters. She was good at studies up to 8th standard, but poverty forced her to quit and work in the agricultural field. She worked four years to help her brothers continue their studies. Since she was very diligent, she was selected for a 4-month tailoring training given by the Government. She needed …

December 31 2015

Borrower Training Has Found Its Audience

Prosperity Rings’ current partners hopped right onto our advice to enhance borrower opportunities by providing training in various trades and services.

We encourage them to name their company and package their product with that name and contact information. Labeling and business cards are also important for a service enterprise.

Borrowers are learning true entrepreneurial skills.

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October 26 2015

Unexpected Trainers

Training borrowers in viable enterprises entailing products and services has been uppermost in our goals. We have had fine partnerships. On the United States side, the Bellevue Rotary and other Washington Clubs have been exceedingly generous with their grants toward funding Prosperity Rings borrowers.

On our October India visit to the Tiruchirapalli area members of seven Rotary Clubs offered training in their expertise. Past District Governor …

March 7 2015

Funding Contingent on Training

On the Prosperity Rings visit to Tamil Nadu, February 2014, we brought together Partners SHWET and SRIA with four sources of training. We agreed that a requirement for receiving a Grant would be the establishment of training programs to provide new skills and trade options, with the resulting borrowers’ commitment to practice more sustainable trades with their loans. In March, SRIA was granted $15,500, and …

February 21 2015

Star Entrepreneur of 2014: Sammiyammal

Sammiyammal broke out of her captive marriage when she became widowed. Her parents, being poor, could not give her a good marriage and wed her to an older man as his second marriage. He did not allow her to go out and work, but only to take care of him. He was untrusting, jealous, and always watchful of her.

After 19 years of marriage, Sammiyammal …

December 21 2014

Fund Raising Event: Indian Ceremony and Festivities

Guests stepped over a traditional rangoli design on the threshold of the Otis-Pasternak home. The rangoli decoration is a folk art passed down through generations to bring good luck. Katherine and her mother Nancy greeted attendees with the red tilak on the forehead, our point of wisdom and concentration, and the arati burning lamp ceremony, an act of veneration and love.

Each guest received a …

May 23 2014

Prosperity Rings Links With Days for Girls

Tipped off by Prosperity Rings supporter Gini Bunnell, Nancy Pasternak attended a Days for Girls training and work session to create non-disposable sanitary napkin kits in Bellingham, Washington. She learned that these kits alleviate the stigma that makes girls and women in developing countries feel tainted and unclean during their menstrual periods.

Having learned how to tailor the non-disposable napkins at this session, Nancy decided …

March 21 2014

Star Entrepreneur of 2013: Alamelumangai

Alamelumangai was not good enough for her husband’s family. Her husband had been a child laborer since the age of ten, having run away from home to work in a soft drinks company in Chennai. At age 16, she met Katturaja, and they ran away to Chennai to work in the factory. When she became pregnant, they returned to the in-laws, who housed her husband …

November 2 2013

Tough Mudder Raises Funds for Loans

Board Member Katherine Pasternak recruited her brother Ken from San Francisco and Board Member Sarah Pasternak’s fiancé Nigel from London, England, to join her Tough Mudder team, from which they raised funds for Prosperity Rings. This 12-mile race, designed by the British Special Forces, puts its participants through an ice bath, hanging rings course and monkey bars, a crawl through mud under barbed wire, a …

April 22 2013

Launching the Computer Center

David Mansingh of SHWET had a dream of establishing a computer center to train vulnerable girls coming from rural poverty who are destined, otherwise, to marry very young and live in uneducated isolation. He approached his micro credit partner, Prosperity Rings, for help in establishing the center. CEO and President Nancy Pasternak enlisted her Bellevue Rotary Club to fund the creation of the center with …

March 25 2013

India Visit: Great Training Ahead!

Prosperity Rings visited its two current partners, SRIA and SHWET and former partner ANISHA in February 2014 for its annual monitoring visit. The primary focus of the visit with staff and borrowers was to provide opportunities for rural women to learn new products and services and establish their enterprises on these more sustainable and diverse businesses. While riding from one group to another we came …

March 1 2013

Inspiring True Entrepreneurialism

Prosperity Rings was dogged, untiring, resolute, and unwavering in its mission to inspire borrowers to make their businesses truly entrepreneurial, with a solid business plan, reinvestment of profits, and expansion to become self-sustaining. Board Member Katherine Pasternak*, who accompanied Prosperity Rings President Nancy Pasternak on our February 2013 monitoring visit, contributed a great deal of expertise to the business oriented discussions we held with group …

February 1 2013

The Rotary Connection

As Rotarians — Derick, a member of the Seattle Club, and Nancy, of the Bellevue Club — we can’t help but see ways to give a leg up beyond micro credit loans among the ladies with whom we work. They, themselves, have taken the initiative to ask for developments that improve their quality of life, as was the case of SRIA borrowers’ request for drinking …

January 7 2013

Star Entrepreneur of 2012: Mariyammal

Mariyammal comes from the village Pasupathykovil. In 1990, without asking her opinion, she was given in marriage at the age of 19 to Mahalingam, a drunkard. He worked as a bullock cart rider and earned Rs.200 per day. He spent Rs.150 on alcohol and gave the remaining Rs.50 (52 Rs = $1) to his wife for family expenses.

The couple soon had a baby boy …

September 15 2012

Playing Bridge to Create an Enterprise

Bridge enthusiasts are always up for a get-together to play bridge. Prosperity Rings President Nancy Pasternak hosted luncheons and bridge playdays on many occasions throughout the year. Spicy Mexican and tangy Italian cuisine, plus our now-famous lemon dessert, became a part of the charitable bridge fund raisers.

From bridge clubs, bridge classes and duplicate centers, friends and friends of friends gathered together with the satisfying …

June 28 2012

Status of Women in India

Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t just about making money for Prosperity Rings borrowers. Having her own means of support brings a woman a great amount of respect, status, and clout. Over the past 12 years, Prosperity Rings has heard the stories of and done case studies with hundreds of our borrowers, many of whom have suffered physical and mental abuse and violence.

Women’s plight of subservience …

February 20 2012

Star Entrepreneur of 2011: Chitra

Chitra, 33, comes from the village Thiyagasamuthiram. At the age of 17, her parents arranged her marriage, without consulting her, to 32-year-old Dhanapaul. Her husband, to the neglect of his own wife and children, has dedicated himself and his earnings to his six sisters. He has taken out loans at an exorbitant rate for all six of their weddings. In order to help him pay …

December 11 2011

SRIA Borrowers Prompt Community Water Project

Prosperity Rings takes pride in the fact that our borrowers learn to become active leaders in their communities and take charge of making improvements happen that no one else has had the courage and confidence to launch.

SRIA responded to the appeal of Prosperity Rings’ borrowers of Muthampattiyarkottam Village to provide a source of drinking water for its residents. SRIA planned this project proposal together …

May 22 2011

Nancy Pasternak Awarded Mary Maxwell Gates Philanthropy Award

Nancy Pasternak, Founder and President of Prosperity Rings and alumna of Kappa Kappa Gamma (Iota,) was honored to receive the 2011 Mary Maxwell Gates Award for contributions, inspirations, and volunteerism.

Mary Maxwell Gates, the late wife of Bill Gates, Sr., and mother of Bill Gates, was a member of UW’s Beta Pi KKG chapter. As she went about her innumerable volunteer endeavors, she stepped back

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April 27 2011

The Road Out Of Bondage — Skill Training In Tailoring

For years, Prosperity Rings has urged our partners in India to train their borrowers in a marketable skill. At last, Anisha Microfin Association has initiated a tailoring training program. It has identified 50 poor adolescent girls from seven hamlets of the backward and Dalit community. These adolescent girls are school dropouts only because their school education was discontinued due to poverty and lack of opportunity. …