Fortalecimiento Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to FORTALECIMIENTO Group, consisting of MELIZA GILBER, GLADYS, CAROL ARIANA, EMILIA, MARIOLY, DELIA, JENNY, INGRID, CARMEN ROSA, JIOVANNA, MARIA EUGENIA, MARIA SELVA, EDWIN, KAREN DAYANY, JUANA by Fundación Agrocapital, a partner of ACDI/VOCA in Bolivia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 5 months of this loan, Fundación Agrocapital, a partner of ACDI/VOCA will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Today, I had the opportunity to speak with the members of Fortalecimiento about the impact of their Kiva loan on their businesses and qualities of life.

Jovana struck me as a sharp woman who speaks fast and concisely. Jovana has a bakery and buys and sells cars, and she used her loan to clean up her bakery and buy a table for her clients. She also bought two cars to sell. The profits from both of her businesses have improved and her quality of life has improved greatly since she has been able to buy clothing for her children, a stereo, a TV, and a fan for her home with the profits. Her children are 15, 10, and 7 years old, and she told me that their quality of life has definitely improved as well. Jovana is looking forward to getting her own stand in the market so that she can sell even when it rains. Even though she will have to pay rent on the stand, she believes it will be well worth the extra cost.

Melissa is a seamstress and used her loan to buy more cloth and thread. She has been selling clothes for eleven years, since she was 15 years old. She has six sewing machines in her home and she sells her clothing at her market stand from 9am to 7pm every day. She tells me that there aren’t many sales these winter months since she mainly sells summer clothes, except for special days like Mother’s Day. In her tropical region, she can still sell some summer clothing year round. However, vendors from the colder region near La Paz, Bolivia, often bring high quality winter clothes to her town so there is a bit of competition. She has a lot more skill making summer clothing, so she prefers not to delve into making winter clothing. Melissa tells me, “Without this loan, it would have been harder to keep my business running in this low sales season.” In the future, she would like to make her business bigger and keep progressing.

Emiliana has a few different businesses: she has sold Essica, Yanbal, and Avon cosmetics for four years, she has worked in a potato factory for one year, and she used to be a seamstress. Recently, she has stopped her seamstress job and used her loan to buy more cosmetics to sell. Since she started her factory job, she has started losing some of her clients, so is happy to have invested more capital in her business to help it to grow more. In fact, her clients are so loyal that they’ve started commenting that Emiliana has betrayed them by getting a new job! Emiliana is looking forward to growing her door-to-door cosmetics business more so that she can leave her factory job. She wants to have her own market stall where she will sell cosmetics, clothing, and shoes. “I don’t like to be a prisoner,” she told me with a laugh. “I like being free and having my own business so I can easily take time off when I’m sick or need to attend Crecimiento meetings.” The profits from her business have helped help to pay for her daughter’s university education; her daughter is studying industrial engineering. “Little by little, I want to keep moving ahead.”

If these entrepreneurs interested you, consider lending to more AgroCapital clients here.