Luanda, Angola ? With just $1,000, Ana Helena Domingos is transforming her life.

She used the loan to buy goods in bulk and graduate from street vendor to wholesaler, doubling her income in 10 months and spending the proceeds to send her daughter into a better school and start building a house that will get them out of a one-room hovel.

The source of what she calls “my salvation” is a microcredit bank modeled on the one in Bangladesh that won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

“It’s changed my life, and my daughter’s,” said Domingos, 27, standing behind stacks of canned sardines, corned beef, cooking oil and condensed milk on Rua Parque, an unpaved street where vehicles, bicycles and carts maneuver around goods spilling from street stalls.

The only freshly painted building on the block is NovoBanco, the source of Domingos’ loan of 80,000 kwanza, or just under $1,000.

Inside the bank, bright red, green, orange and yellow piggy banks line a counter promoting a campaign to get poor people to open savings accounts. It’s the only bank in Angola that does not require a minimum deposit.

Angolan bank customers talk with tellers at the NovoBanco bank in Rocha Pinto neighborhood in Luanda. In the background, plastic pigs line the counter to launch the full-service bank's newest savings promotion. NovoBanco is a microcredit bank modeled on the one that won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

It is also the only bank offering small loans in this southwest African nation that is rich in oil and diamonds but where most of the 14.5 million people get by on incomes of less than $2 a day.

NovoBanco is one of 19 banks in Latin America, eastern Europe and Africa started by ProCredit Holding AG, which originated in the late 1970s in Brazil and now is based in Frankfurt, Germany.

Stefan Wolff, general manager of the Angola branch, said NovoBanco was inspired by the pioneering work of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, which won the Peace Prize along with its founder, Muhammad Yunus. The Nobel committee said working to eliminate poverty can result in a lasting peace.

In Africa, NovoBanco operates in Angola, Ghana, Mozambique and Congo.

“We want to provide access to those who have been excluded from the banking system, and provide access for small businesses which cannot grow because they don’t need large loans and the (ordinary) banks refuse to work with them,” said Jorge Antonio Trula, manager of NovoBanco’s Rocha Pinto branch.

Wolff said giving poor people loans can help them more than gifts of money.