Edilberta

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Edilberta 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.

Edilberta used her Kiva loan of 3000 soles to buy basic food items for her small grocery store. She bought five sacks of rice and five sacks of sugar, in addition to vegetable oil and different brands of milk and yogurt. She expects the supplies she bought to last for about three months. The next loan she takes out will be smaller, since the summer months (January through March) are usually slow in Ayacucho, since many local residents leave the city to return to their hometowns in the countryside or to go on vacation. Edilberta’s store is near the local university, so many of her clients are students and faculty members who leave Ayacucho in the summer.

Edilberta has been a FINCA client for about fifteen years now. She tells me that she joined her village bank when she was young. “And look, now I’m a little old lady!” she exclaims, laughing. “FINCA has helped me a lot,” she says. Knowing that she has to make her loan payments on time makes her work harder, too. “FINCA makes you wake up in the morning,” she tells me, as her fellow group members nod in agreement.

Edilberta’s dream for the future is to build her own home. She is pictured below (center) with Felicitas and Julia, two fellow members of the Ollantay Village Bank.