Jose Patricio Quispe Carrasco

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Jose Patricio Quispe Carrasco by Emprender in Bolivia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 8 months, Emprender will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

As a Kiva Fellow working with Kiva’s local partner MFI in Bolivia, Emprender, I recently had the opportunity to visit with Don Jose, a Kiva funded entrepreneur.

Jose works near his wife selling electronics and burned DVDs. In La Paz, burned DVDs and other pirated music and movies is a huge business. On every street one can find the newest movies and TV shows. There are several larger businesses that reproduce the DVDs in quality so high, it is difficult to tell if they have been burned or not. These businesses sell to people like Jose. Jose only sells the finest quality DVDs which go for 15 Bolivianos, or $2.14 each. He purchases them for 5 Bolivianos two times weekly. He estimates his daily sales to be about 500 Bolivianos

His wife has a similar stall a few streets down. When we met Jose, the whole family was together and they were closing their stands for lunch. Jose was rushing off because he needed to take his daughter to school. In Bolivia, there are two sessions. Students either attend morning or afternoon classes, but not both. Jose’s daughter attends the afternoon session.

He used his Kiva funded loan to restock his store with the newest releases including this year’s Oscar hits. Without this loan he says his stand would look empty and he would not be able to make ends meet.

It was a pleasure to meet Don Jose and to learn more about his business. Thank you for supporting him, Emprender and Kiva.

If you would like to read more about Bolivia, and the experience of Kiva Fellows here, please check out our blog: link text