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Another story of The Three Little Pigs

You may have heard of the three little pigs, but you have never seen anything like these.

These pigs live down a long dusty road in Nicaragua, are made from local clay into old fashion piggy banks, and changed the life of Marta and her sister.

Marta and her sister live alone in a remote area of Nicaragua where a woman can make $1.50 a day working in the fields. Too old to work the fields and with no other family, Marta is a prayer in her church and spends several hours a day praying to earn an income. In her spare time, she began making these banks and had a special knack for molding unique expressions, giving them individual faces that seem to come alive.

Due to their remote location, sales were slow, but with the help of Potters for Peace, a Nicaraguan NGO, the sisters were introduced to Brenda Nims, founder of A Different Approach, in 2004. Since then, the banks have become a popular product.

When A Different Approach first joined forces with Martha and her sister, they had to address a number of challenges, including low production capacity and health concerns. While Marta could form about 4 pigs a day, she could only fire one, because each one was made on her stove in her house. Not only was it time consuming, but produced unhealthy smoke inside her home. Potters for Peace built her an outdoor kiln and built some shelving on which to cool and store the finished pigs. Her production capacity has increased substantially; and, she is now able to fire 19 pigs at a time.

Thanks to the growing sales with A Different Approach, these little pigs go to market across the United States and offer Martha and her sister the opportunity to do what they love and make about four times what they could make in agricultural work.