Teodolinda Magdalena

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Teodolinda Magdalena by Microfinanzas PRISMA in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 months, Microfinanzas PRISMA will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Ms. Teodolinda Magdalena Galarzo Espinoza lives in a small village of Chires, a two-hour hike from the village of Huayahuasi, which is itself a 90-minute bus ride from Tarma, Peru. Teodolinda started a small store in her village with the loan that she received. Her best-selling products are small candies (golosinas) that sell for 10 or 20 centavos each. She buys these caramels, candies etc. every Sunday from Tarma and mainly sells to kids (her store is across the street from the village’s only school – an elementary). Teodolinda only has one competitor in the village and her store has been steadily growing. Ms. Galarzo Espinoza is a single mother with two children, ages 7 and almost 5. Her dream is to have nice things for her children because as of now, they do not have any. To this end, Teodolinda saves some of the profits from her store for her kids while the rest she reinvests into buying more candies and small goods. Her goal is to fill the store one day. In addition to her store, she has eleven cows – five of which are pictured with her. Thank you for your loan; it has been the start-up capital for her new store and hopefully a first step for achieving her dreams for her kids as well.

My journey to her village of Chires was documented in a blog entry on the Kiva Fellowsblog here: http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/12/21/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-kiva-fellow/