MADRID (AFP) - Seven Spanish mothers who posed virtually nude for a calendar to fund a children's centre, but were left with huge debts when it did not sell, have had help from an unlikely source - a porn website.
"This morning, the famous 'mothers of Serradilla' announced that www.fisgonclub.com has paid the 9,000 euros owed to their printer," the website said Wednesday.
The seven mothers in the village of Serradilla del Arroyo in western Spain posed virtually nude for the calendar in the local swimming pool, the tourist office and the bakery last November.
They hoped the calendar would fund a leisure centre for their children in the village of around 400 people.
"It was an erotic calendar by the firemen of Bilbao that gave us the idea," one of the women, Rosa Garin, told AFP last month.
But only 1,500 of the 7,000 copies of the 2008 calendar were sold, at five euros each, and they ended up in debt to the printer, who threatened to take them to court.
Fisgonclub, which bills iteself as an "amateur live porno site", said five of the women will take part in a live Internet video-conference this week from their village in a bid to sell the rest of their stock.
"We are very grateful to Fisgonclub.com for giving us the chance to clear our debts and bring us closer to our dream, which is that our children can practice sport," Garin said in a statement on the website.
A spokeswoman for Fisgonclub quoted in the statement said: "When we heard about this story and we saw that they used eroticism in such a natural way to achieve their aims, we knew that we had to help these courageous mothers."
Their story recalled that of a group of middle-aged women in England who posed almost naked for a calendar in 1999 that helped raise money for leukaemia research. It was made into a film, "Calendar Girls", starring Helen Mirren.
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