Maria Isabel Melara De Ramirez

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Maria Isabel Melara De Ramirez by Apoyo Integral in El Salvador. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 24 months, Apoyo Integral will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear Kiva Lender,

Thank you for supporting an entrepreneur in El Salvador! For the past several months, I have been working as a Kiva Fellow (see http://www.kiva.org/about/fellows-program) with Kiva’s Salvadoran field partner, Apoyo Integral. As you may know, all entrepreneur profiles on Kiva’s website are posted by local Field Partners (microfinance institutions), which are organizations that lend to the working poor to help them lift themselves out of poverty. The role of the Field Partner is to screen each entrepreneur, upload his or her loan request onto the Kiva website, disburse the loan, and collect repayments.

I would like to believe that the recent introduction to micro-lending through organizations such as Apoyo Integral and Kiva has finally opened doors for poor Salvadorans seeking to finance their businesses, homes, and families’ future. However, one thing I have slowly learned is that, in El Salvador at least, micro-finance’s most important contribution to date may ultimately not be the offering of cash to El Salvador’s poor but rather the gift of allowing them the dignity to be held accountable. After a decade of civil war in the 1980s, which attracted billions of dollars in foreign aid and has left over one million Salvadoran immigrants (20 percent of El Salvador’s population) working in the U.S. and sending five billion dollars a year back to families, many Salvadorans have become accustomed to receiving financial support. Not until recent years, however, have they been invited into a formal contract to which they are asked to sign their own names, to give their own word of honor.

My visits to struggling lenders such as Mercedes (http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=40971&_tpos=1&_tpg=1) remind me that even remittances and credit do not ensure a thriving business and rarely cover the risks of not having access to health insurance. sufficient education, or a secure roof. Despite this, I was often inspired by stories of success, most memorably when I visited Lucy’s bakery (http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=63109&_tpos=7&_tpg=1). As a young single mother, Lucy has expanded her small bakery business with the support of four small business loans from Apoyo Integral. Now, with three full-time employees (mom, dad, and her younger sister), a brand new industrial oven, and thousands invested in professional baking tools, Lucy and her family are thinking about building a larger bakery across the street to meet the overwhelming demand for their tasty treats. Though Lucy’s success tends to be the exception rather than the rule in El Salvador, her leadership and confidence in her role as an entrepreneur (especially as a woman in Latin America) gives me hope that micro-credit can be a source of economic - and cultural - independence among El Salvador’s poor.

Through my experience working with Apoyo Integral and their partner organization, the Salvadoran Foundation for Integral Development (FUSAI), I quickly realized how the organizations focused beyond just providing credit and charging interest. Both Apoyo Integral and FUSAI use the savings on credit (graciously provided without interest from Kiva lenders such as yourself) to pay for technical assistance services for clients building their own homes, training micro-entrepreneurs and youth in enterprise strategies, and even teaching a much-needed accounting class here and there. You, a Kiva lender, are giving them the financial resources; Apoyo Integral and FUSAI give them confidence; and the entrepreneurs are individually responsible for making something happen for their families and for El Salvador.

For a complete list of Apoyo Integral loans currently fundraising, click here: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=81&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_te=mj. Thank you again for supporting Kiva and micro-entrepreneurs in El Salvador.

Saludos,

Sam Baker

Kiva Fellow 2009