Yeang Choun

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Yeang Choun by MAXIMA Mikroheranhvatho Co., Ltd. in Cambodia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 months, MAXIMA Mikroheranhvatho Co., Ltd. will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Yeang Choun was at a village ceremony for children to honor their parents when we arrived at her home but was happy to leave the festivities a few minutes early to sit down with us and provide an update on her Kiva loan. Yeang says that with her $200 she was able to purchase the silk needed to expand her weaving business and that she has been able to improve her overall standard of living.

Yeang explained that before she took out her loan with Kiva she was only able to afford material to weave cotton. She lacked the capital to move into weaving silk, a more lucrative sector of the weaving industry. With her Kiva loan she purchased the necessary materials and now produces a more expensive product for her customers, increasing her overall profit. Cotton, she explains, can be sold at $4 per kbun (a piece of fabric approximately 3.6 meters in length and width) while her silk pieces can be sold at about $8.50 per kbun, a quite sizeable difference!

With the extra income Yeang says she will continue to support her children’s education as well as keep up with the rising cost of food as she works to feed her family. Her children are growing and, of course, eating more, she jokes. Her oldest son is now in secondary school and his educational fees are thus more expensive than before. She says she plans to continue weaving in the future and expects to take out another loan to buy even more silk in the future. She hopes that with this work she can continue to send her children to school but admits that she is not sure if she will be able to afford the costs.

Below: Yeang and four of her children.