Ysidora Valdez Basilio

Ysidora is 46 years old and has five children. All her children go to school in nearby El Seybo. She is married and her husband is an agricultural worker in the surrounding farms.

She plans to use her loan to build a little structure, adding on to her house for a small beauty salon. She currently runs her business out of her house, offering services such as doing hair and nails for local women. The name of her salon is “Salon Liza”, after her oldest daughter, who is 17.

Ysidora belongs to a group of four other women, who are taking out the loan collectively. The name of her women’s collective (composed of 5 loan groups) is “Esperanza y Fe” – “Hope and Faith”. She is pictured at her biweekly repayment meeting.

This is Ysidora's fifth loan from Esperanza, each loan being for 5000 pesos, so she can progressively build her beauty salon adjacent to her house. Esperanza typically offers smaller loans initially and as a group of women successfully pay back their loans and get a credit history, they can borrow increasingly larger amounts.

NOTE: As stated above, this $750 loan will fund Ysidora's business as well as four other businesses in her solidarity group. She and four other women micro-entrepreneurs came to Esperanza and formed their group. They have all gone through Esperanza business training program and will receive equal shares of the loan to invest in their respective businesses and will pay back the loan together. The entire group must pay in full and on time, otherwise group members must make up the deficit before any payment can be made. This creates accountability among the group members because each one shares in the struggles and successes of the other members in their group.