Esperanza Onofre De Cotrado

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

This loan has been refunded for the following reason:

This is a duplicate of the following loan: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=73052

It was posted twice due to an administrative error. As such, we have taken the decision to refund it. We apologize for the inconvenience and we hope you will use you Kiva credit to re-lend to another entrepreneur on the website.

Thanks!

As a Kiva Fellow living in Puno, Peru, I had the opportunity to meet Esperanza Onofre de Cotrado and discuss her most recent loan from the Microfinance Institution (MFI), Manuela Ramos, through Kiva. Esperanza is one of the founding members of the community bank, “Niños de San Salvador” and has been taking out loans with Manuela Ramos for almost eleven years. With her most recent loan of $400, she purchased wool, thread and needles that she uses to create various artesian goods, such as embroideries, sweaters and blankets. Her daughter is a member of the same community bank and Esperanza gives her daughter the money from the loans so that her daughter can buy the material Experanza needs and deliver it to Esperanza’s home. Although Esperanza used to travel to nearby towns to buy her material, she is getting older and traveling is becoming more difficult so she is very appreciate of her daughter’s help. Every few months, her daughter travels to Chile to sells their artesian work because the potential profits are higher there. Esperanza is grateful that her entire family has work and hopes that they continue with this success.

Below is a short video of Esperanza Onofre de Cotrado.

A glimpse at the MFI, Maneula Ramos: Manuela Ramos is an organization that was founded in Peru in 1978 and is dedicated to the implementation of programs and projects that advance the rights of Peruvian women. They have more than ten offices throughout Peru and seven of those are operating with a microfinance program. Their programs include educating women, primarily in the rural areas of Peru, about gender equality, domestic violence, women’s rights and environmental awareness. Twelve years ago, Manuela adopted a Microfinance program, CrediMujer, that assists groups of 15-30 women in coming together, forming a community bank and taking out a loan together that they use for their individual businesses; this is where Kiva comes in, providing interest free capital for Manuela Ramos to loan. These community banks allow women to work together in idea building and sharing, create accountability to repay the loan (if one women defaults then the entire community bank defaults and no woman in this bank may take out another loan) and enable the organization to work more efficiently (the loan officers make visits to the community bank meetings rather than each individuals place of business).