Lotty Mercedes Bartra Garcia

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Lotty Mercedes Bartra Garcia by Manuela Ramos / CrediMUJER in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 4 months, Manuela Ramos / CrediMUJER will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Lotty Mercedes Bartra Garcia is thirty-six years old. She is the president of her communal bank Mujeres Talentosas or Talented Women’s Bank; here she is pictured above (standing) with the bank’s secretary, treasurer and the Manuela Ramos loan officer. Lotty has three children with her husband who she’s been with for over ten years.

Lotty left the mountainous jungle city of Tarapoto to come work at the airline ticketing counter of the city of Pucallpa airport when she was sixteen years old. Now she lives in central Pucallpa and makes her living renting three storefronts below her home in the city center. She currently earns S./2,400 ($765) per month from her three tenants: two cell phone shops and a toy store.

Lotty used her most recent Kiva loan to rewire and divide the electrical and lighting system for the three stores. Now she can provide separate electricity bills to each of her tenants instead of charging percentages of one master bill as she once did. Eventually, Lotty would like to convert her stores – currently constructed in lumber – to concrete structures with noble walls, ceilings and foundations. She says that most stores on her block are constructed in concrete and she would like to stay competitive and also keep the stores more secure by redoing the foundations, floors and walls.

Towards the end of the interview, Lotty tells me how much she likes working with Manuela Ramos and how it’s changed her point of view. She says that before she started working with the communal bank she never really had her own money and let her husband manage all financial affairs. She never handled money and says she was afraid to have it. Now she says, as member of the bank, she is confident handling her own money and that of the other bank members. She has learned to be more independent and confident during her tenure as bank president.