Gladys Judith Arpi Quitusaca

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to GLADYS JUDITH ARPI QUITUSACA by Fundación ESPOIR in Ecuador. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 3 months of this loan, Fundación ESPOIR will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

I met with Gladys on Tuesday afternoon at the sixth repayment meeting of her village bank, the Cochapamba group. I gave her a color printout of her Kiva profile, which the whole group was very excited to see, especially her son Jonathan, who is five years old. Gladys was very curious about Kiva, its lenders, and how it works.

Gladys didn’t use her loan to buy clothes, as was originally stated in her Kiva profile. She used about half the money to finish some detail work on her house, and used the other half to buy chickens and chicken feed. The house is now almost complete, though some of the kitchen elements are missing, and the flooring isn’t quite finished yet. Her husband is an architect, so he designed the house and built it with the help of some contracted workers. Before they built the house, she and her husband lived in the house of one of his uncles. Gladys also bought 50 chickens, of which she has already sold 22, since the chickens grow to full size and are ready to sell within two months. She hopes to take out another loan to buy more chickens when her group finishes this loan cycle in another month.

Gladys has gotten slightly behind on her loan repayments, though not seriously so: right now she has about $40 in late payments to make, which she plans to pay off at her group’s next meeting in two weeks.

Gladys has been a member of her village bank for the past two years, and says that thanks to loans, she has been able to invest in her businesses selling clothing and raising chickens, and built her house mostly from the profits from these two businesses.

Note: According to the repayments posted on Kiva and repaid to lenders, Gladys appears to have made all of her payments on time. This is because ESPOIR has chosen to cover payments from delinquent borrowers. She also appears to have two months left in her loan cycle, not one month. This is because of the delay between when Gladys makes repayments to Fundación ESPOIR and when ESPOIR reports these payments to Kiva. Payments may take up to six weeks to be deposited into lenders’ accounts—please be patient!

Dear Lender,

As you may know, all Kiva loans are actually administered by local field partners. For the past couple of months, I have been working as a Kiva Fellow with Fundación ESPOIR, a brand new Kiva field partner. Over the course of the summer, I’ve had the privilege of meeting Espoir’s first batch of Kiva borrowers and hearing their stories.

A couple of the most memorable stories I heard were from two young women who are using loans to help run their small businesses while also pursuing their education. The first, Verónica Acurio, worked for years in her parents’ restaurant before deciding to open a restaurant of her own. She now has her own restaurant and uses the profits to pay for medical school. She has one year of studies left before becoming a full-fledged doctor. Despite her impressive accomplishments, Verónica is very down to earth and not at all boastful. Before her Kiva interview, most of her fellow group members didn’t even realize that she is a medical student.

Another Kiva client, Ana Lucia Chapa, lives in the rural community of Turi with her husband and her four-year-old son. Monday through Friday, she makes the long commute to and from the city of Cuenca, where she works full-time as a housekeeper. She also raises guinea pigs, sheep, and cows at home for extra income. Ana Lucia dropped out of school when she was 14 to start working so that she could help support her family, and so she never finished high school. After she got married, though, she decided that she wanted to be a veterinarian, and started going to school on the weekends to earn her high school diploma. She still has eight or nine years of education ahead of her before she can officially become a veterinarian, but she has a great attitude and is determined. Her family has been supportive and her parents and in-laws help take care of her son while she works and studies.

Both Veronica and Ana Lucia are 23 years old, just like me. When I heard their stories, I was impressed that they could juggle so many responsibilities simultaneously and overcome such daunting obstacles in pursuit of higher education, which is more than I can say for myself. Both are cheerful and upbeat despite the difficulties they face and the long hours they put in, seven days a week. I hope to return to Cuenca ten years from now and find them both in white coats, running their own successful businesses of another sort.

Kiva clients aren’t the only people at ESPOIR with inspiring stories of upward mobility. I’ve also had the privilege of meeting staff at ESPOIR’s headquarters and four different branch offices. All received me warmly and touched me with their hospitality and generosity, but I was particularly impressed by a handful of female ESPOIR loan officers who were once village bank clients themselves. For these women, becoming loan officers is an important step forward in their lives. They find the work difficult but also quite gratifying, and are happy to be helping clients because they know how it feels to be a small-scale entrepreneur in need of business capital.

It has been exciting and inspirational to see success stories like these during my fellowship with Fundación ESPOIR. I hope you continue to support Ecuadorian entrepreneurs through ESPOIR!

To search for currently fundraising ESPOIR loans on Kiva, click here . No currently fundraising clients? Please check back soon! In the meantime, you can join ESPOIR’s Kiva Lending Team.

Best regards,

Cynthia McMurry

Kiva Fellow