Ilda Alejandrina Peñaloza Uyaguari

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to ILDA ALEJANDRINA PEÑALOZA UYAGUARI 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 afternoon I went to the first repayment meeting of the Campesinas de Ruizho Village Bank to chat with Doña Ilda about her Kiva loan. Audrey and Dan, two professional photographers who are friends of Kiva, accompanied me to the meeting and took pictures of Doña Ilda and her animals while I asked her how business has been lately.

Audrey, Dan and I traveled to the meeting in ESPOIR’s car along with Karina, the group’s loan officer, and Cumandá, the regional supervisor. On the way, we accidentally ran over a chicken who was indecisive in crossing the road. We all felt bad, then promptly forgot about it. Once we arrived in Ruizho, we got out of the car, only to find that the chicken had gotten lodged in the grill of the car, head first. None of us dared to remove the now dead chicken ourselves, so we asked for Ilda’s help. She promptly removed the chicken and gave it to her mother, who in ten minutes had the chicken plucked and ready for soup.

Ilda then took us on a short tour of her nearby plot of land, where she raises guinea pigs and rabbits and also grows corn. She used part of her Kiva loan to buy fertilizer for her cornfields. There hasn’t been much rain lately (winter is the rainy season in Ecuador), so the corn still isn’t ready to harvest, Ilda told me.

She showed us some of her guinea pigs and talked about how she raises them. Each animal takes about six months to grow to full size. Breeder guinea pigs can each have up to three litters of three to four babies each, and their pregnancies last about 2 months. After that, they can still be eaten, but they aren’t good for breeding anymore. Ilda is pictured holding two of her pregnant guinea pigs.

Ilda says that the most challenging part of raising guinea pigs is that they’re quite sensitive, and sometimes get sick. Last winter it rained heavily and she lost some of her animals after they got sick from eating wet grass.

Ilda is also planning to buy 25 chickens with her loan money, as well as tables and chairs for her tortilla business, but she hasn’t done so yet. She has been an ESPOIR client for the past two years and has taken out four previous loans. She says that the money has helped her get out of a difficult financial situation while allowing her to buy food for her animals and fertilizers for her land. She recognizes the importance of not getting over indebted: “You should only take out what you need,” she said.

Correction: The three nieces and nephews Ilda is currently raising were abandoned by their mother, who is Ilda’s sister-in-law, not her sister.

Note: Ilda appears to have repaid none of her Kiva loan, when in fact she has successfully paid off one loan installment. This is because of the delay between when payments are made to ESPOIR and when these payments are reported and sent to Kiva. Payments may take up to six weeks to be reported and 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