Sumaq Warmikuna Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the Sumaq Warmikuna group, consisting of Saturnina, Teodora, Georgina, Maruja, Faustina, Rodimir, Marlheni, Raul, Nelida, Martha, Juliana, Lidia, Yolanda, Reyna by FINCA Peru in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 months, FINCA Peru will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

The Sumaq Warmikuna (“Beautiful Women” in Quechua) recently finished its first loan cycle with success.* I spoke with three group members to hear their impressions of their first FINCA/Kiva loan.

Saturnina is a quiet, shy woman who speaks mostly Quechua. She sells cancha, a popular Peruvian snack of toasted giant corn kernels, on the streets of Ayacucho. She says that her loan of 300 soles was not enough to make much of an impact on her business, and that sales have been pretty steady. Still, she likes FINCA’s lending methodology, and plans to continue working with Sumaq Warmikuna in future loan cycles.

Maruja used her Kiva loan of 600 soles to buy fabric, but says it wasn’t enough money to be very useful. She wanted to sew high-quality clothing, but could not buy all the materials she needed with such a small amount of money. She is requesting a loan of 5,000 soles for her next loan cycle.

Juliana used her loan of 600 soles to buy rice, sugar and flour to stock her dry goods store. Her first loan cycle went well, she says. She enjoys the educational/training sessions given by FINCA’s loan officers, and thinks that FINCA’s new life insurance policy (being offered to all FINCA clients for just one sol (US 33 cents) per month) is a great idea. Her goals for the future are to improve herself and her business, save up, and take out larger loans.

*Note: Because there is a time difference between when a loan is funded on Kiva and when a loan is disbursed by the local MFI and because Kiva doesn’t record payments until they have been deposited into lenders’ accounts, Sumaq Warmikuna appears to have repaid just two thirds of its loan. In reality, the loan is now fully repaid.