Pharmacy, Clothes, Bamboo Weaving, Noodles, Fertilizer, And Construction Materials Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the Pharmacy, clothes, bamboo weaving, noodles, fertilizer, and construction materials group, consisting of Thi Hai Nguyen, Thi Hang Nguyen, Thi Vui Tran, Thi Huong Tran, Thi Hong Dinh, Thi Du Chu, Thi Thuong Tran 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 in meeting Ms. Nguyen Thi Hai, the group leader of this group. She was chosen to be the group leader because her shop, a pharmacy, is near the center of the village and close to the other members’ houses. Thus it is convenient for the other members to come to Ms. Nguyen’s pharmacy to bring their weekly repayments. As I interviewed Ms. Nguyen several of her group’s members came in to make repayments.

Ms. Nguyen started her pharmacy five years ago after she completed college, which is equivalent to a technical university back in the US. She learned about medicines while attending college and actually is the only source for medicine in her village. In a way her store is part franchise and partly her own store. One of her providers of medicines actually pays her a salary and tells her what price to sell the medicines at; thus she doesn’t own the inventory of this vendor. However, there are medicines that this vendor cannot provide and those medicines were purchased by Ms. Nguyen using her Kiva loan; she also used her Kiva loan to purchase toiletry items.

Ms. Nguyen did not disclose her income to me, but did say she invests all her profits back into her business by purchasing more medicines and inventory for her store. As she sees her income increasing with her loans she is continually reinvesting any extra income into her business. She is a quite a shrewd business woman! When asked what her hopes and dreams are she provided an answer dissimilar to most who hope that their children get good jobs in the future; instead she said that she wanted to earn more money so that she could save to go to university and become a real pharmacist. Ms. Nguyen is a very ambitious woman and I wish her good luck with her business and her goal!