Luz Neyra

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Luz Neyra by EDAPROSPO in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 months, EDAPROSPO will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

In the tens of thousands of loans posted on Kiva’s website, mistakes sometimes occur. In the case of Luz Neyra, there was a slight mix-up between the initial interview and the initial uploading process. The woman in the photo and story is not Luz Neyra; rather, it is another woman in her local lending group who works in the same market as Luz. Since I organize my visits by assembling names of borrowers in need of journals, my recent expedition to said market had me interviewing the real Luz Neyra and not the woman in the photo. Later in the week when I was assembling my many photos and interviews to post as journal updates, I discovered the discrepancy. After several rounds of communication, it would prove very difficult to find the woman in the photo (obstacles: making the long trek out there again, her initial loan officer had since moved on to another organization [it’s hard to ID a person by photo if the person in charge of that relationship is no longer here], and the woman herself is no longer a client of EDAPROSPO since her loan ended several months ago). What I know is that the woman in the photo DID pay back her loan in full and on time and then subsequently decided to take a break from microfinance. Nevertheless, I had a great talk with Luz Neyra (the name in your loan) and what follows is an update on her life and business…and a video with audio, soon to follow!

Luz Neyra works in the Virgen de Fatima market in Los Olivos, a northern suburb of Lima, Peru. She belongs to the second oldest lending group with EDAPROSPO’s branch in Los Olivos. For five years, she and a group of neighbors and workers in the V. de Fatima market (including the woman in the photo) have gotten loans together and slowly built up some savings. Luz’s business began with selling her homemade condiments, a variety of salsas used in most types of everyday Peruvian dishes. People will buy little bags of salsa that typically last for the day’s cooking for their families. Luz has since added a variety of other products to her market stall including soy sauce, milk, common household necessities, oils, etc., but her popular condiments remain the backbone of her operations. She used the loan to invest in such side products because the constant presence of condiment clients makes additional sales likely.

Ms. Neyra makes all of her condiments fresh every morning. When she started her business, she admittedly did not know how to prepare a good salsa very well; she told me her first attempts were rather watery concoctions. Now she knows all the right combinations and the popularity of her stall attests to that discovery. Luz works everyday from 7am until 1.30pm at the market; before she leaves for the market, every morning she makes her salsas fresh from Peruvian chili peppers, garlic, tomatoes, etc. Each daily bag of condiments sells for about 40 centavos (more or less depending on the quantity and for certain types of salsa) and she makes about 80 soles in profits every day (100 centavos equals 1 sole).

While the profitability of her business has allowed her to grow her business and fix up her house, her real joy is the change it brings to her family. Prior to the condiment business, Ms. Neyra worked in Central Lima selling clothing. Her hours were long and the profits less stable. People’s decision to purchase clothing or not is largely a reflection of economic conditions (ie if you have very little money, you may decide to keep wearing what you have on longer rather than buy a new shirt) while everyone cooks everyday regardless of macroeconomic conditions. In addition, her close proximity to the market Virgen de Fatima (it is in her neighborhood while Central Lima is a 90minute bus ride away) allows her shorter working hours and the opportunity to see and support her daughters – ages 18 and 15 respectively – much more than her previous occupation allowed. Ms. Neyra hopes to one day build enough on her house that she has extra rooms to rent out and room for a bodega as well.

Due to the overwhelming popularity of her store (I think 30 people bought her salsas while I was interviewing her), I decided to buy one of her salsas as well. While her salsas can be used for a wide variety of Peruvian dishes involving chicken, beef, and vegetables, I chose one used for ceviche – a Peruvian dish composed primarily of more-or-less raw fish (the lime’s acidity cooks the fish). Soon I will post a short video of Luz Neyra and my subsequent culinary experiment.

These are the ingredients you need to prepare ceviche for two people:

2 filets of a white fish (I used tilapia)

1 red onion

1 red chili pepper

8 key limes (or Mexican limes…they have more acidity than the large ones)

cilantro as desired

salt and pepper

Luz Neyra’s homemade garlic salsa (or garlic powder if you can’t make it Los Olivos, Peru)

**Corn on the cob

**Yucca or sweet potato

**Leaf of lettuce

Instructions:

1. Cut the white fish filets into bite-size portions

2. Cut the red onion into bite-size portions

3. Cut the red chili pepper into very small pieces (diced?)

4. Squeeze the juice out of the key limes into a bowl

5. To the bowl of lime juice, add salt, pepper, garlic concoction, cilantro, and cut-up red chili pepper.

6. Add cut-up fish filets to lime juice bowl and let it soak for 20 minutes

7. Add onion to mix at the very end, if ever.

8. **Boil corn on the cob; cut out a cross-section of it and place on side of serving plate

9. **Boil yucca or sweet potato; cut out a cross-section of it and place on other side of serving plate

10. **Place single leaf of lettuce (the bowl-shaped ones) in center of plate.

11. When twenty minutes are up, put some onions on top of the lettuce leaf, then put soaked fish, excess liquid, and rest of onions on top of it.

Enjoy your ceviche! When you finish the plate, Peruvians typically pour the rest of the liquid into a cup and drink it. This mixture is called Leche de Tigre (Tiger’s Milk) and so named because it gives you quite the kick with its acidity and spiciness (and supposedly cures hangovers). Peruvians typically eat ceviche either for lunch or as an appetizer for dinner (with soup to follow).

If you would like to support other clients of EDAPROSPO currently fundraising on Kiva, please click here.

I recently had the opportunity to visit the EDAPROSPO client you lent to and have posted a video on YouTube of our interaction. If the embedded video does not show up, please visit the YouTube location here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y1JQVPkVYc

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Enjoy!

Kiva Fellow Josh Bull

During a routine audit of Field Partner EDAPROSPO, Kiva discovered a number of discrepancies between the information posted to the Kiva website and what actually occurred on the ground. Specifically, many loans uploaded to the website before December 2008 contain inaccurate loan amounts, terms and/or loan uses.

This is in violation of Kiva policy, and as such, as soon as we were alerted to a possible violation we placed EDAPROSPO on "pause." After placing them on pause, Kiva proceeded to execute a complete verification of every loan EDAPROSPO posted to the Kiva website; in total we examined 757 loans.

As a result of our audit, we have discovered that 52% of the loans posted to the Kiva website by field partner EDAPROSPO contain data inaccuracies. 98% of these inaccuracies pertain to loans posted to the Kiva website before December 2008, when EDAPROSPO was under a different management team. After significant management turnover at the end of 2008, almost all loans on the Kiva website contain complete and accurate information and these loans comprise only 2% of the total discovered inaccuracies.

You are receiving this email as we wanted to alert you that, after our verification efforts, Kiva cannot confirm that the specific loan you funded was actually disbursed. We can, however, confirm that the person you lent to is an EDAPROSPO borrower. Because EDAPROSPO has decided to guarantee all loans made on Kiva, you have continued to receive repayments on schedule.

Because the new management team has proven that they are committed to providing accurate and transparent information to the Kiva website, and because they have repaid almost all of the inaccurate loans on-time, Kiva has decided to re-open the Kiva-EDAPROSPO relationship. During this new "pilot" phase on Kiva, we will be working closely with the new EDAPROSPO team, including their internal and external auditors, to continually verify new EDAPROSPO loans posted to Kiva, and if we are alerted to any new inaccuracies we will pause their relationship with Kiva and follow-up accordingly.

If you have any questions, please visit Kiva's Help Center at http://www.kiva.org/about/help.