Celia Perez Chistama

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Celia Perez Chistama by Manuela Ramos / CrediMUJER in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 5 months, Manuela Ramos / CrediMUJER will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Celia Perez Chistama is using the loan she received from Kiva to buy more chicken from local chicken farmers. Celia now buys $250 worth of chicken to sell daily. The loan she received has given her the ability to meet the demand of her customers. Her economic situation is better because she has the capital to buy and sell more. Chicken is the most popular meat in the city of Pucallpa. There is a lot of competition between the venders but never a shortage of demand. Her customers range from house wives to large restaurants.

Celia says the loan has helped her take charge of her life. She is happier because she has more freedom and less stress as a result of her improved economic situation. Both of her children are students and she can now breathe easier while paying for their educations.

Celia Perez Chistama is a member of the Virgen de la Natividad communal bank in the Peruvian jungle city of Pucallpa, Peru. It is the regional capital of the tropical Amazonian department of Ucayali which is characterized by the meandering Ucayali River that flows north, meeting up with Amazon and, eventually, the Atlantic Ocean. Fifty years ago, Pucallpa was a tiny caserío or hamlet; but everything changed when the only paved highway leading into the Amazon region was built and Pucallpa became the gateway to the jungle at the roads’ end. Since the mid-20th century, the city has sprung up and engulfed the surrounding caserios. Today the city is a bustling, hot metropolis with immigrants from all over Peru.

Celia immigrated from the mountain jungle province of San Martin six years ago to provide for her children. She works selling chicken in the Bella Vista market: buying, butchering and selling one hundred chickens per day with the help of her Kiva loans. Before she joined Manuela Ramos, Celia says she could only afford to purchase twenty chickens at a time. But through her loans she’s been able to grow her business five fold.

Celia wants to work hard so that her children can study to be professionals. She wakes up at 2:00 am every morning to go to the wholesale market to buy her chickens for the day. Celia says she does this so that her daughter can study law and her son engineering.