For more than twenty-five years, Ibu Raheni has prepared and sold jenang, traditional Indonesian porridge, to earn a living and support her daughters. Each morning, she carefully prepares and serves five varieties of traditional porridge and desserts using family recipes — a livelihood inspired by her mother, who once sold rice and vegetables.

Raheni spent over two decades building her business in Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia, while raising her children as a single mother. “When I first started sales, I was mobile, going from village to village,” she remembers. Raheni’s motivation has always been her children, saying, “I must be capable of supporting my children on my own.”

Indonesia is home to millions of women like Raheni who run micro and small businesses. 65 percent of the country’s microenterprises are run by women, many of them informal ventures that struggle to access essential formal financial services, such as credit, needed to run and grow their businesses.

Raheni prepares her porridge dishes in her kitchen and transports them by bicycle to sell at a local market.

Raheni received the capital she needed to invest in her business through accessible financing from our partner Amartha, a leading provider of technology-driven financial services to grassroots users in Indonesia, which has cumulatively served over 4 million women-led ultra microbusinesses since 2010. After learning about Amartha from her neighbor, she joined a group loan and uses the funds to purchase ingredients and equipment she needs to sustain her business.

“I stood on my own two feet — I became independent, right up until today.”

Today, Raheni sells her porridge at her stall just outside the entrance of the bustling Pasar Gede market of Surakarta, in the same spot where her regular customers know where to find her each day. Rain or shine, she prepares the porridge at home and transports it to the market on her bicycle, which doubles as her market stall. “Selling like this allowed me to put my children through school and cover whatever needs we had,” Raheni reflects. She was especially happy when her youngest daughter was accepted to pharmacy vocational school.

We’re proud to work with Amartha, through an investment from Accion Digital Transformation and Accion Advisory’s work to support the institution’s journey to digitize its group lending operations and diversify product offerings.

When women entrepreneurs like Raheni are connected to responsible financial services, the benefits ripple outward, from homes to communities to local economies. “I pioneered this from scratch and kept going until now,” says Raheni. “I stood on my own two feet — I became independent, right up until today.”