Tuch Chear

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Tuch Chear by CREDIT MFI -- World Relief in Cambodia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 18 - 18 months, CREDIT MFI -- World Relief will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Chear Tuch is a hardworking 48 year old woman with a busy family. A very narrow street between two buildings on the outskirts of Phnom Penh revealed the impoverished community in which Chear Tuch lives. She welcomed us into her dark brick house, where she and her family were hard at work skinning and cleaning the fruit that she sells. The fruit is from the grapefruit family, but it is much sweeter and a little larger than a typical grapefruit. It is extremely juicy and quite delicious.

Chear Tuch’s business demands frequent traveling. She must first buy her fruit from the wholesale market ‘Psar Doum Kor’, where she buys large quanities of grapefruit to take home and prepare for sale. Once ready, the fruit is covered with plastic and taken to restaurants around town. Chear Tuch asks permission from the restaurant owner to sell her fruit to the customers. Often these local restaurants do not serve fruit or desert of any kind, so the restaurant owners are only too happy to give their customers more selection to encourage their return. All these journeys used to be made on moto-taxi, the cost of which ate away at the potential profits of the business. Not anymore- Chear Tuch is delighted with her new motorcycle which has cut the costs of running her business. Before this loan from Kiva/Credit, Chear Tuch had had no experience with microfinance, but after this success she is considering applying for another loan in the future to expand her business.

Above is a picture of Chear Tuch preparing her fruit. To watch a very short clip of the same please copy and paste this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6SIH4folw4