Suzana Mwashala

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Suzana Mwashala by Sero Lease and Finance Ltd. (SELFINA) in Tanzania. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 10 months, Sero Lease and Finance Ltd. (SELFINA) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear lenders,

Mambo (Greetings!) from Mbeya, Tanzania and from SELFINA! Thank you for your loan through Kiva to Susana Mwashala, a SELFINA client and micro-entrepreneur. The purpose of this journal is to update you on Susana and the status of her business.

As you know, your generosity helped Susana obtain a loan of $500 in April 2008. She is running a Vitenge and Khanga business and used the loan to purchase vitenge and khanga in bulk. Vitenge and khanga are traditional Tanzanian cloth, often very colorful and with bold patterns, that women make into clothing.

She works at her business for 9-12 hours per day, 6 days per week. She is assisted by one employee at her business. Since she took out the loan, her business has been doing well and Susana’s monthly profits have increased from about $60 to approximately $100. She has used these extra profits to pay the salary of her one employee, to help repay the loan, to pay her electricity and water bills, to buy more food for her family and to pay medical bills.

In the future, she is planning to request a loan of $1000 from SELFINA with which she plans to diversify her business by adding additional items to her store such as shoes and children clothing. On the personal front, her family is doing well and everyone is in good health. As you may remember, she is married and has 3 children. At the time of the application of the loan, she had only 1 dependent, however, since then, she has welcomed into her home 2 additional dependents who had become orphaned. She is proud to report that all of the children are in school; one is in secondary school and the rest are in primary school. Susana dreams about being able to send her children to University. SELFINA aims to continue to assist Susana and other women like her, and empower them towards financial security and increased confidence through microloans. Thank you very much for supporting Susana! To continue to support women like her and lend to SELFINA borrowers, please click here:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=90&status=All&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb

Asante tena (thank you again) for your support!