Outside, Emiliana's sister tends the day's batch of rice cakes on an open hibachi. With their lives on the edge of survival, this fledgling business must go on. The profit Emiliana earns from daily sales is critical to her family's survival. Emiliana's friend, Filipina Doton, fans herself in a corner of the yard where shade offers scant respite from the searing heat of the noonday sun.
"Emiliana is really a good person," she says. "Even though she is very poor, she is a kind and loving woman, always helping others out."
She says too many women like Emiliana fall back into poverty when illness or death visits their families. "They cannot afford to pay funeral expenses when loved ones die," she says. "The cheapest coffin costs 6,000 pesos - that's half of Saturnio's yearly income."
One in five Filipinos have insurance coverage. At least half of the remaining 70 million citizens earn less than $200 a month and are financially vulnerable should catastrophe strike. Filipina says funeral expenses and the burden of paying household bills on their own put families into debt for many years - some for life.
Landless and without savings, Emiliana and Saturnio were fortunate. Filipina was able to persuade local officials to help pay for a simple plywood coffin and service for Emiliana's brother.
Emiliana and Filipina have taken steps to ensure that the death of their husbands or children will not place their families in jeopardy. They are members of a local mutual benefits association (MBA), a co-operative institution through which they pay weekly premiums for insurance policies that protect the microfinance loans they are using to establish and grow their businesses. Like the microfinance institution that issues their loans, they view insurance as a necessary cost of doing business.
They are part of a growing trend among poor households in the Philippines to buy insurance protection.
"Not all wives believe in insurance, but all widows do," says Ernesto Galenzoga, a career banker and president of RIMANSI, a regional resource centre in Manila that helps poor families in south-east Asia obtain insurance. RIMANSI partners with financial institutions to establish micro-insurance programs for their clients.
"The poor need insurance more than the wealthy," he says. "They have fewer assets and less wealth. Yet the poor repay their loans even better than others."
Like micro-credit, micro-insurance is based on the idea that a small amount can make a big difference. In the case of Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc. (ASKI), micro-loans are given only to women. As a condition of the loan, they must buy insurance. For 30 pesos (about 80 cents) a week, a borrower's family receives 120,000 pesos (about $3,175) in benefits if she dies.
Her policy also provides 20,000 pesos ($530) for the death of her husband or child, and medical reimbursement of up to 2,000 pesos ($50) per year. If she remains in the program for at least three years, 50% of the premiums are returned as savings. The coverage and benefit amounts vary across insurance programs.
The insurance products Emiliana and Filipina are using owe their origins to a unique venture begun in 2003 by the Canadian Co-operative Association and the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) with financial support from the Canadian International Development Agency. CARD had recently transformed a high risk, informal in-house insurance program it was providing to clients into a professionally managed mutual benefit association. Insurance became a separate business line owned by its policy holders. CCA provided CARD-MBA with funding for market research, business planning, professional development, improved board governance, products and associated MIS development. Since then, CARD-MBA has increased its membership from 50,000 to 132,000.
In 2005, CCA helped create Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RIMANSI) to replicate the mutual model throughout the Philippines by helping financial institutions transform their own in-house programs into co-op MBAs.
RIMANSI is owned by rural banks, co-operatives and micro-finance institutions, six of which have established independent member-owned and managed MBAs with help from RIMANSI. Five more MBAs are in various stages of development and seven more are in talks with RIMANSI.
CCA micro-finance specialist Derek Cameron says the micro-insurance industry has a bright future, not only in the Philippines but throughout South East Asia and beyond.
"The demand for RIMANSI's services are great," says Mr. Cameron. "What started in the Philippines only four years ago is now being piloted in Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia."
"In Canada there is a basic system of public insurance that cushions us against loss, including health and employment," he explains. "Beyond that there are various policies we can purchase to protect us against risks. This isn't the case in much of the developing world. Public insurance is often unavailable and private insurance is too costly. Without protection, any gains the poor make over the years can be wiped out by one event. The impacts can be devastating."
ASKI is a founding member of RIMANSI and the provider of micro-finance loans to Filipina and Eliana's MBA. Headquartered in Carabanatuan City, 150 kilometres north of Manila, ASKI is using credit and social services to help eradicate poverty in this land-locked province where one-in-three families is poor. Most loans are given to women.
"Women are so creative," says ASKI founder Rolando Victoria. "They can save even small amounts of money. That takes great discipline. Men don't want to handle small amounts of money. We lend to women and after a while their businesses grow and their husbands want to get involved."
Mr. Victoria says it wasn't long before borrowers asked ASKI to provide insurance to secure their loans against the high costs of family illness and death. Initially, ASKI made arrangements with insurance companies to sell their products to its borrowers, then turned to RIMANSI to help establish its own co-operative MBA program. Mr. Victoria says that partnership has been so successful that ASKI has already enrolled 40% of its 50,000 micro finance borrowers into the RIMANSI insurance program.
Mr. Victoria says RIMANSI does the actuarial work and the program is regulated by the Insurance Commission of the Philippines.
Filipina has taken out six loans from ASKI, vital injections of capital which she has used to transform her convenience shop and rice vending ventures into going concerns. She hopes the same will be true for Emiliana, whose rice cake business is doing well as she pays off her second loan. Each payment Emiliana makes at her weekly MBA meeting is proof that her family is breaking out of the hand-to-mouth existence they've endured for so long.
"I joined the MBA because I need security for the rest of my family," says Emiliana. "Who knows what the future will bring."
Hours later, emerging from her home, Emiliana is tired but relieved. She has completed her responsibilities to assure her brother's safe passage to heaven.
In her hands she now cradles a clear glass bottle filled to the brim with tiny star-shaped strips of colourful paper. She calls them her "wishing stars".
"They are the wishes I hold for the future," she says. "That I can send my children to school so that they can have the best future possible."
Covering all bases, Emiliana has done everything within her power and circumstances to protect her family's dream of a happy, prosperous life. Even her wishing star promises are insured.