Paulino Quispe Yujra

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to PAULINO QUISPE YUJRA by Fundación Agrocapital in Bolivia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 18 - 24 months, Fundación Agrocapital will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Paulino is a delightful older gentleman whom I visit one afternoon at the carpentry workshop he runs from his home in Warnes, a small town about thirty minutes outside of the bustling city of Santa Cruz in tropical eastern Bolivia. He’s hard at work making brushes when I stop by: he has a contract to produce seven or eight dozen brushes per week for a local company. “I don’t lack work,” he chuckles. He often makes three or four dozen brushes per day, since he sells some locally at the Warnes market in addition to filling the bulk order. His brushes have lovely patterns on the underside made from alternating colors of boiled, dried cow’s hair.

Paulino also makes brooms and works as a carpenter, making furniture and even building houses. The head of AgroCapital’s Warnes branch, Ingrid, put in a special order to buy some of Paulino’s furniture.

Paulino used his Kiva loan to buy the materials he needs to make his brushes (e.g. wood, nails, cow hair for bristles) and pay his workshop’s water and electric bills. In the future, he says, he’d like to remodel and expand his workshop. Currently, the space is a bit cramped and the roof is just about six feet high (which doesn’t pose any problems for Paulino or I in terms of hitting our heads, but he would like to have a larger space to work in). Paulino would like to take out another loan from AgroCapital to buy the materials he will need, like wood for the walls and corrugated tin for the roof.

Paulino clearly takes pride in his work, and enjoys the opportunity to tell me about what he does. As I’m leaving I admire the fruit trees in his yard: mangos, bananas, chirimoyas. He tells me he takes good care of his trees, and waters them regularly. He tells me to stop by any time, and I tell him I’ll be back once those mangoes are ripe.