Justa Pastora Pacco De Quino

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Justa Pastora Pacco de Quino 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.

As a Kiva Fellow living in Puno, Peru, I had the opportunity to meet Justa Pastora Pocco de Quino and discuss her most recent loan from the Microfinance Institution (MFI), Manuela Ramos, through Kiva. Justa is a member of the community bank, “Niños de San Salvador” and has been taking out loans with Manuela Ramos for about eight years. With her most recent loan of $650, she and her husband purchased sheep, which they slaughter and sell in their small meet stand in the market in Juli, Peru. Once a week, her husband travels to Acora, a very rural area of the Andes, to buy sheep, and the loans from Manuela Ramos have been helpful because the increased capital has allowed him to buy more animals during the trips, increasing profits.

Justa is a 46-year-old mother of six. Three of her children already have families of their own and her youngest child is just about to finish high school. Currently, all of her children and their families live with her and her husband, with a total of fourteen people living in a three-bedroom home. When I ask her about her hopes for the future, she tells me that she wants to be able to continue to work and provide for her children and grandchildren.

Below is a short video of Justa Pastora Pocco de Quino.

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).