Magdalena De Jesus Cruz Perez

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to MAGDALENA DE JESUS CRUZ PEREZ by AlSol (Alternativa Solidaria Chiapas) in Mexico. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 11 - 17 months, AlSol (Alternativa Solidaria Chiapas) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

I met Magdalena and got to chat with her for a while. She lives with her partner and has one child who is 2 years old. She rents a house near her in-law’s house. Some years ago she opened a grocery store at her in-laws’ place. She opens from 8 am to 8 pm, and sells a variety of products like rice, cookies, pasta, soft drinks and many others. She hopes to expand her business and that is why she has been borrowing from Alsol (Kiva’s local partner). She has been Alsol’s client for some years now. Her Kiva loan is of $8000 pesos which reflects her good credit history with Alsol, since usually Alsol lends smaller amounts of money but if you proof to be a good client and a punctual payer they allow their clientele to apply for larger amounts, which is Magdalena’s case. She belongs to the group called Merced 4. Her weekly income through her store is around $800 pesos which gives her enough margin to make her payments. She has used her loan to mainly replenish her store and widen the variety of products which allows her to have a competitive advantage versus the other neighborhood stores, which don’t have such a variety. Her husband works as a truck driver, transporting merchandise from Tuxtla Gutierrez (the state’s capital) to San Cristobal de las Casas (the closest city to her community). She is very grateful with Alsol and with Kiva lenders for allowing her the opportunity to help her husband with their household maintenance; they both are saving to be able to have their own place, which they hope will happen pretty soon.