Cuen- Las Rositas Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to CUEN- LAS ROSITAS Group, consisting of MARIA HORTENCIA QUICHIMBO BUENO, ROSA BALBINA DOMINGUEZ LOJA , MARIA ROSA QUICHIMBO PILLCO , MARIA ASUNCION DOMINGUEZ ZHUMI , MARIA NARCISA DUMAGUALA TENESACA, ROSA CRISTINA LOJA DOMINGUEZ, LUIS ALBERTO LOJA DUMAGUALA , MARIA NATIVIDAD LOJA LOJA , MARTHA ROSANA QUICHIMBO BUENO , WILMAN FRANCISCO SARANGO MAZA by Fundación ESPOIR in Ecuador. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 5 months of this loan, Fundación ESPOIR will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

On Wednesday evening, I visited the Las Rositas Village Bank at their third repayment meeting to see how the group is doing with their Kiva loans. I was accompanied by Audrey and Dan, two professional photographers and friends of Kiva’s who came along to take some photos of Kiva clients. Dan is pictured below with Las Rositas.

Rosa Dominguez told me that she used her loan of $550 to buy chicks and baby guinea pigs, plus food for both. She’s had some problems with her animals getting sick lately. She lost 10 chickens because of the cold weather, and some of her guinea pigs have gotten sick with something she calls “the badness” (el mal). She gives them drops of medicine each day to nurse them back to health. She currently has 17 chickens and 10 guinea pigs.

This is Rosa’s third loan from ESPOIR. “It’s a big help for us,” she said of the loans. She always invests her loan money in her animals. She plans to take out another two loans or so, then sit out for a few loan cycles so that she can dedicate herself to raising her three sons, who are 14, 12 and 9 years old. She described her children as restless but well-behaved.

I also spoke with Cristina Loja, another group member. She used her Kiva loan of $200 to pay for the official paperwork she needed so that her mother can give her a plot of land. She plans to build a house there to live in with her family, and also wants to grow corn and vegetables. She has been an ESPOIR client for the past three years, and said that loans have opened up many possibilities for her. She has fun with her group; they are all friends and neighbors and know one another well, so meetings are a good opportunity to socialize and joke around.

Note: Due to the delay between when repayments are made from clients to ESPOIR and when ESPOIR reports and sends these payments to Kiva, the Las Rositas Group appears to have made two repayments, when in reality they have successfully made three of their 12 loan repayments. Payments may take up to six weeks to be deposited into lenders’ accounts—please be patient!

Thanks to Audrey and Dan for the photo! You can see more photos of their travels (including Kiva clients in Guatemala) here.

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