A group of women involved in the Thames Women's Loan Fund are fighting to cap interest rates after a rise in locals struggling to cope with rising interest rates and debt repayment. Made with funding from NZ On Air.
Cara Penney says she's has had enough of vulnerable people being taken advantage of - when they need a loan, or are paying off credit card debt.
"Interest rates are creeping up. A few years ago the rate on a card was about 20 to 25 per cent, now it's about 30 per cent interest. That's 30 cents on every dollar that you are paying, and that's in interest alone."
Mrs Penney is part of the Thames Women's Loan Fund.
Representatives from the group will travel to Wellington next week to urge central government to introduce an interest rates cap.
Marie is one of hundreds of women the Fund has helped.
She got an interest free loan from the group - after her credit card repayments got out of hand.
"I had actually managed to pay quite a bit off of it, but it just didn't seem to get any further down. I just wanted it ended, I didn't want to deal with the company any more."
"To help a series of women, over years, to get started, in whatever it may be - education, business - whatever they want to achieve as far as their dream is concerned."
Linnea McDonald is an investor. The impassioned secondary school teacher and businesswoman says it isn't in her adoptive home country's nature to do this to it's people.
"We care about each other, and that is why I moved here. It's really upset me, we have healthcare for all of our people and yet we are giving the poor, the vulnerable and the elderly over the sharks to have a feeding frenzy - on the people who can least afford this."
90-year-old Gwenyth Wright helped to start up the first loan fund in 1992.
"We don't have any agenda except to help women achieve what they want to achieve. If they want to start a small business, then that is what we help them with."
Mrs Wright has seen more and more people fall into debt in the last 25 years.
All the more reason, she says, to have a cap on interest rates introduced now.
