La Fortaleza, Group 3

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to La Fortaleza, Group 3, consisting of Bethania Hernandez, Manuela De Paula Mosquea, Maria Valdez, Maria Valdez, Maria Castro Nunez by Esperanza International, a partner of HOPE International in Dominican Republic. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 5 months of this loan, Esperanza International, a partner of HOPE International will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear Esperanza lenders,

As you may know, all entrepreneur profiles on Kiva’s website are posted by local Field Partners like Esperanza, whose mission is to “free children and their families from poverty through initiatives that generate income, education, and health, restoring self-worth and dignity to those who have lost hope.” As a Kiva Fellow working with Esperanza International in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I saw Esperanza’s mission at work most recently while visiting a batey.

For those that are not familiar with the term “batey,” it is a small, barrack-style community built and maintained by large sugar corporations. These communities are often completely surrounded by sugar cane fields, and often they lack basic resources such as clean drinking water, transportation, reliable electricity, and medicine. The majority of a batey’s members work in planting, cutting, and loading sugar cane for eight months of the year. The other four months are a stalemate, during which there are no sugar cane earnings.

In order to ensure continued earnings, one entrepreneur, Cloreta Yan, who lives on a rural batey, used her Kiva loan to open a small store in her house. Her community previously did not have a store where they might buy basic supplies, which meant that community members had to travel to nearby communities to shop. When my fellow Kiva Fellow Kalie Gold and I first visited Cloreta, she offered very basic supplies, such as sugar, oil, and rice. When I conducted a follow-up visit, she was selling over 20 items, including tobacco, ice, drinks, and cookies. She is now earning 600 pesos a week and, according to her loan officer, continues to expand the line of merchandise she sells.

Esperanza has supported 4,251 Kiva entrepreneurs thus far, resulting in approximately $200,000 loaned. Continually working to improve their organization, they have recently opened an office in Trau de Nord, Haiti. Esperanza continues to grow - thanks to Kiva lenders like you!

Staff members at various offices throughout the Dominican Republic visit their entrepreneurs frequently, and many of you will receive an update on an entrepreneur who received a loan contribution from you. Unfortunately, due to logistical and administrative constraints, reaching every entrepreneur for an update is just not possible, even with Esperanza’s dedicated team. Whether or not an update is provided on a specific entrepreneur to whom you made a loan, I hope that you have enjoyed this update on the impact that Esperanza has had with Kiva funds.

Finally, I would like to thank you personally for supporting an entrepreneur in Haiti or the Dominican Republic. It saddens me to realize that this letter marks the end of my time working with Kiva’s Field Partner Esperanza here in the Dominican Republic. For the last three months I have had the pleasure of working with Esperanza, visiting numerous Kiva entrepreneurs, and training staff members in writing business profile updates for Kiva lenders such as yourself.

To see all current fundraising loans from Esperanza on Kiva.org, please click here:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=44&status=Fundraising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_te=mj&_te=mj

To see a short YouTube video on Cloreta Yan, please click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8reiqg1pbBo&_te=mj

On behalf of Kiva, Esperanza, and its entrepreneurs, we thank you for your continued support.

This morning I had a few minutes to speak with Amparo, the group coordinator for La Fortaleza 3, who is currently repaying her second loan along with Esperanza International. Amparo owns a cafeteria and used clothes store that she runs from her house. She began the cafeteria about a year ago and soon after took out this loan which allowed her to buy a toaster and a gas tank along with food items such as plantains, potatoes, yucca, cheese, ham, ketchup, cookies, etc. She says that business has been good so far and that most of her clients come around 10 am and 6 pm or so after they get off of work. Currently though, her pantry is empty and she is looking for another loan to help get her restocked with items to sell. Amparo says that she's been learning how to save up money throughout this process and that she's always been able to make the repayments, although sometimes it was a bit difficult. With her earnings, she is currently making payments on a computer that is on layaway for her children and has bought pans, books for school, and a small TV. This loan has taught her to not sell on credit to members of the community since they are unlikely to repay and her Bank of Hope has given her her more friends and people to go to for business knowledge and advice. In the future, she wants to buy a freezer so the natural fruit juice doesn´t spoil as fast and one day buy her own house. Thank you for helping her pursue her dream!