Suyapa Espinoza Medina

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Suyapa Espinoza Medina by Prisma Honduras, S.A. in Honduras. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 months, Prisma Honduras, S.A. will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

As a Kiva Fellow working with Kiva´s partner MFI, Prisma, I had the recent opportunity to meet Suyapa, when she stopped by the office.

Suyapa started a pulperia, or a variety store, about 4 years ago with only 3000 Lempira. Like most pulperia´s in Honduras, Suyapa´s is run from the front of her home. She has grown substantially and estimates that she makes 9000 in profits monthly. Her first products were chips and beans and now she offers a wide variety of food stuffs including bread, cold drinks, fruits, cleaning supplies and of course, beans and corn. With the profits from her pulperia, Suyapa and her family were able to buy their own piece of land, and build a house. They continue to complete the floors and the doors. She is hopeful that 2009 will be the year she finally owns her own, complete, home.

Suyapa´s husband is very supportive of Suyapa´s work, especially since she is able to stay home with their two young children. Suyapa´s eldest is married and lives in a different neighborhood in Tegucigalpa. Her husband works in construction, which is very helpful since he can do some of the labor on their house himself.

This year, Suyapa hopes to lend some money to her dad, so he can increase drastically his bean and corn harvest. Suyapa hopes to find an economic way to sell her father´s product that can benefit them both.

It was a pleasure to talk with Suyapa. Thank you for supporting her loan.

To read more about the adventures of this Kiva Fellow, and about microfinance in Honduras, please go here: link text