Dios Es Amor Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the Claudia Azucena Trejo Artica group, consisting of Claudia Azucena Trejo Artica, Lourdes Celina Avila Portillo, Zoila Esperanza Flores Escoto by Prisma Honduras, S.A. in Honduras. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 8 months, Prisma Honduras, S.A. will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dios es Amor

Dios es Amor is a group of three hardworking neighbors in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Each woman has used her portion of loan differently.

Claudia Azucena Trejo received 7,000 Lempira, about $370 dollars. With this money she buys materials for her pulperia, or variety shop, which she runs from her house. Every few days a sales person drives to her somewhat remote neighborhood to sell items, and deliver items Claudia has specifically requested. She carries, churros, fruit drinks, water, paper products, beans and corn, which she sells by the pound. She buys corn for 40 Lempira a pound and sells it for 55 Lempira, making a profit of 79 cents per pound. She has had this business for one year. She is unmarried and has one daughter, age 3. She lives wither her brother and sister. For Claudia, this pulperia is perfect because it allows her to stay at home and care for her daughter.

Zoila Esperanza Flores, pictured here, makes tortillas in her back yard over a wood-burning oven. This is her first loan with Prisma. Her husband of 30 years sells clothing in a different neighborhood, and also brings some of her tortillas to sell at the same time. 3 tortillas can be sold for 1 Lempira, or about 5 cents. She boils the whole corn kernels for several hours until they are soft enough to grind by hand into a corn mash. Each day she wakes up at 4am to make over 600 tortillas. She used this loan to buy more corn, and more wood for the stove. With the increased amount of wood, she is able to cook for longer each day.

Lourdes C. Avila sells lacteos, or dairy products. She purchases hard cheese, soft cheese, and the ever-popular Honduran butter, or mantequilla from a roving sales person that comes from a Tegucigalpa suburb called Olancha once or twice a week. She buys 80 pounds of each item each week, and keeps them in her home. Mantequilla is similar to butter, but it is the consistency of a sauce and is eaten at almost every meal in Honduras. Her husband sells the products in various neighborhoods, and she sells them from her home. Lourdes also sells beauty products from Avon catalogs on commission to help supplement this income. The loan was used to buy products, and to increase the variety of Avon catalogs she carries.

If you want to see photos of the other women in this group, please paste the following link into your browser:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32201939@N05/3100054501/in/set-72157611041586127/