Victor Silva

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

Today I stopped by the home of Victor Silva to see how things were going at his bakery here in Encarnación, Paraguay. Victor wasn’t available, so I spoke with his wife and business partner, Graciela. In between fielding orders from the customers who drove up to the front gate, Graciela told me that the bakery continues to perform very well. Graciela and Victor used a loan from Fundación Paraguaya to help them start their business almost six years ago. Since then it has grown to become very well known in the area—one can find bread from Graciela and Victor’s bakery at stores throughout Encarnación. With the loan they received from Kiva, they invested in a large amount of stock ingredients for their bread.

Graciela and Victor’s bakery has not just weathered the current economic turmoil that has affected others in Paraguay, it has thrived. Because of recent public works projects on the banks of the Rio Paraná, the city moved a number of residents from the river region to other parts of Encarnación. Graciela and Victor’s San Pedro neighborhood has received an influx of new residents. The accompanying increase in sales has kept the bakery so busy that they have postponed their plans to shut down for a month in order to move their equipment to an improved section of their property. Graciela says that, as much as she and her husband would like to take a break, they cannot waste this opportunity to raise their income. As the winter season approaches (normally a busy time for bakeries), Graciela says that Victor hopes to purchase a second truck to transport bread around the city.

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