Thi Hiep Tran's Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the group, consisting of Thi Hiep Tran, Thi Hoa Le, Thi Giang Tran, Thi Hau Hoang, Thi Bich Le, Thi Van Anh Nguyen, Thi Hai Do by SEDA in Viet Nam. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 months, SEDA will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Ms Tran Thi Hiep, the leader of this group. When my translator and I first arrived at her house/business for the interview, we thought we had come to the wrong place. All we saw was a door and a wall. However, this was just a door and a wall that made up her house’s covered courtyard, where her dry-goods store is located. (The store was closed for lunch when we arrived).

Ms. Tran, 52, is on her third microloan and she used this current loan to replenish the inventory of her dry goods store. She sells a number of different items including packaged foods and sodas. Her current income from this business venture is roughly 600,000 VND a month (about $35) however, before her loans she did not have any of this income, so this is all new income for her family. Prior to running this shop she helped her husband in his carpentry business. Since she created her store, she kicked her husband’s operation out of the courtyard of the house because carpentry is too dirty: saw dust was getting everywhere and Ms. Tran hated cleaning it up and getting it all over her goods.

Currently, the loan she has from SEDA is her only loan. She is a great example of how microfinance can be successful: she has an income she didn’t have before, and she is voluntarily saving around $3 per week for a rainy day! Previously she had no savings, so this is a great step forward in her personal finances.

Below is a video, in Vietnamese, of Ms. Tran that I made. I hope everyone enjoys it!