Jesusa

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

Jesusa used her Kiva loan of 1500 soles to buy a variety of shoes. She used to just sell clothing, and began selling shoes during this past loan cycle. It’s gone well so far, she says; offering a wider variety of merchandise has helped her business grow. She has made a lot of progress in the four or five years she has been working with FINCA. “My FINCA has saved me from a lot of things,” she says. “I didn’t have any savings before… now I do, and I don’t touch them.” When she started with FINCA, she took out much smaller loans of 500 soles, since her business didn’t bring in much money. “I was scared,” she says, remembering what it was like to start borrowing from FINCA. “Then I took a chance, and I started learning.” She and her husband were heavily in debt to another bank when she first started with FINCA. “They almost took our house,” Jesusa says. She has since paid off all of the debt.

Jesusa chuckles as she tells me how her husband’s attitude about FINCA has changed over the years. He used to tell her FINCA was a waste of time. The other day, he found her membership card, which lists her loan payment amounts and dates as well as the amount of money in her savings account. He was shocked to see how much money she has saved with FINCA—more than 4000 soles! Then, after her group had just switched from weekly meetings to bi-weekly meetings, he became worried because it was meeting day and she wasn’t at FINCA. Sometimes, she makes more money than he does in a month, and she pays for most of the children’s clothing and food for the family herself.

Jesusa is a member of the Glorioso Village Bank, one of FINCA’s oldest banks. The group is currently entering into its 43rd loan cycle and has been around for 14 years. The group is made up of 31 women and one man, who have become very close over the years. From FINCA’s patio, you can hear laughter coming from the group’s meeting room, and the members good-naturedly joke with one another throughout each interview I conduct. Jesusa came into today’s meeting running, since she was a little late. Now, as she talks about the Glorioso group, she has relaxed. “You come in all stressed out, but here you laugh and forget about your problems,” she tells me, smiling.