Farida Zahar

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Farida Zahar by Ariana Financial Services - Mercy Corps in Afghanistan. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 months, Ariana Financial Services - Mercy Corps will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Farida is a teacher at a nearby primary school and mother of 7 children. She teaches Social Sciences for 6 graders. Her salary is $50 a month. Like many other female borrowers, she received the loan to give it to an adult male member of the family to work on--because Ariana Financial Services previously focused primarily on female clients, this would increase the chances of winning the loan for the family. She received a Kiva loan of 42,000 AFS ($840) and handed it over to her husband to complete the $4,000 family budget to purchase a mini van. However, her initial idea for business was tailoring. This switch was attributed mainly to the considerable fall of the tailoring market due to the influx of cheap Chinese products.

Prior to receiving an individual loan, Farida went through four cycles of group loan which started from $150—with an increase rate of 40% upon successful repayment of each last cycle—ending at $500 before qualifying for the individual bulk loan. Upon making timely full repayments, Farida and her husband were able to receive an individual loan of 800+ dollars.

Her husband drives the van for most part of the day and makes around 500 AFS ($10) a day. The couple has been able to make full repayments in a timely fashion. The transportation business is “okay” for them but not satisfying. They said the kids were growing and so were the needs and wants. They were constantly asking for a possible loan increase so they could instead start buying and selling old cars, a trade in which her husband was very anxious about.

Farida is a primary school teacher and knows how to sew clothes as well. She used her loan to complete all her necessities and support her husband. She is very glad that can assist her husband and the children. Her husband is happy from the business he goes on and they are going to start buying and selling the old cars as a new business as soon as possible and to progress her business of tailoring too. They would like to extend his gratitude to Kiva lenders from their best support.