Jane’s* slow descent into poverty started at a family wedding, four years ago, when she offered to help her uncle out of his financial problems.

Not everyone out there is OK and it’s not because we’re uneducated or come from a particular part of the island. Poverty doesn’t have a face

Trusting in the advice of her uncle and father, she used her home as a guarantee for a bank loan she and her sister took to buy the restaurant lease from her uncle. This was meant to sort out his debt and kickstart a new catering business.

But the plans went haywire.

Business complications tore her family apart until she was pushed out of the business – severing her ties with her father and sister.

The restaurant business crumbled and Jane, a separated mother of three, lost her home to the bank.

Jane will be one of three Maltese people sharing their experience of poverty during the 11th European meeting of people experiencing poverty organised by the EuropeanAnti-Poverty Network.

The meeting, to be held in Brussels this week, will bring together over 150 people from 30 countries with direct experience of poverty. The Maltese delegation is headed by Fr Saviour Grima, director of the Millennium chapel.

Jane thought back to the series of events that turned her life upside down, events mainly stemming from business naivety, bad decisions and misplaced trust.

The woman, who once lived comfortably in her Balzan apartment with her three sons, barely had money to feed her boys who were in their teens when it all started.

“This is real. Not everyone out there is OK and it’s not because we’re uneducated or come from a particular part of the island. Poverty doesn’t have a face… I might not show my situation from the outside,” she said pointing towards her clothes.

“But this handbag and my shoes are donations from the Millennium chapel and my clothes are from charity shops,” she said as she tugged at her jeans and white shirt.

Looking back, she wishes she had never gone to that wedding where it all started.

After borrowing €127,000 from the bank, Jane and her sister learned that the business they bought came with hidden problems. The lease agreement contained an addendum that they were only made aware of after signing on the dotted line.

The committee that ran the restaurant had full control on food and beverage purchasing decisions. The sisters could not make ends meet. Friction escalated and Jane left the business.

“I started receiving calls from the bank saying the loan was not being paid. I’d phone my father and sister and they’d tell me payments were being effected. I believed them,”she said.

The bank started phoning her every week until the situation escalated to the point that she was given six months to pay or loseher house.

“I was constantly crying uncontrollably. I felt I had no one to turn to for help. I reached a state when it was all black, everything was dark. Then, something happened, which I think of as divine intervention,” she said.

Some months back she was at the grocer when she saw a woman look very upset. Jane asked what happened and thewoman said she had missed the gasdistribution truck. Jane lent the woman one of her cylinders.

During this dark period, Jane bumpedinto the same woman. Jane looked likeshe was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“She asked how I was. I said not too well but there was nothing she could do.

“She said she might not be able to help but referred me to a social worker who could,” Jane recalled.

Jane went to meet the social worker who helped her find the strength to get back onher feet and assisted her in securing government housing, where she now lives withher children.

“Now I feel I can cope. I can cope with the banks, with the court, with not having money left at the end of the month. What I could not cope with was the idea of having no roof over my children’s heads,” she said.

All Jane wants now is to close the chapter on the restaurant lease and the bank loan. But although the bank is in the process of taking her property, it has not yet done so officially.

Now that her children are growing, she wants to be able to find a job and build a better life for her family without the worry that the bank will take all her belongings.

“I’m a normal person trying to get through life. I just want to move on and put this all behind me,” she said.

*Name has been changed.