21 De Enero Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the ELIODORA PEREZ SUAREZ group, consisting of ELIODORA, PEBBELS, CARMEN, REYNOLD, MARIELA, GABRIEL SILVESTRE, GABRIELA, LAURA, ISABEL, MARIANELA, PATRICIA, JANET MARIOLY, ELIANA, GIOVANA by Fundación Agrocapital, a partner of ACDI/VOCA in Bolivia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 5 months, Fundación Agrocapital, a partner of ACDI/VOCA will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Today, I was able to speak with the women of 21 de enero group to check up on the impact of their Kiva loan.

Eliana has sold clothing and Yanbal cosmetics for 12 years, since she was 22 years old and single. Now, she is married (her husband works for an oil company) and her business has grown a lot since she started taking out loans a few years ago. Eliana buys clothing locally and travels by train once a week to a village twelve hours away, near the Brazilian border, to sell her products. From there, she brings back Brazilian coffee and other different and interesting products to sell back in villages near her hometown. It´s difficult to transport that much by herself, but she checks in her products and pays 48 cents per kilogram. She had stopped working for four months while she was pregnant, but now she´s back to work. "You don´t make a lot, but you still make something," she told me with a positive smile. "My quality of life has improved a LOT since I took out the loan." Eliana has been able to buy more food for her home, move houses, and keep some savings with her new profits since she started taking out loans. She says the profits help out with all of her household duties. In the future, she would really like to have her own house and improve her business more in order to provide a better quality of life for her three little children that are 4 years, 2 years, and 4 months old.

Jovana has a small food store and also sells Yanbal cosmetics door-to-door. With her loan, Jovana was able to buy more capital for both businesses, including sugar, rice, cosmetics, and perfume. "My businesses have improved quite a bit," she tells me with a satisfied smile. With her profits, she has been able to buy more of what was lacking in her home, including armchairs and a blender. She just started her businesses two years ago when she got married. Before, she was completely dependent on her mother, but now she´s a independent woman. She and her husband still live in her mother´s home, and she would like to buy a house for themselves in the future.

Marioli is a receptionist at a telephone operator´s clinic. In her spare time, she used to sell Essica cosmetics and used her loan to buy more cosmetics for that business. The business helped her out financially, but she´s stopped it recently since she is so busy with her current job.

Marianela is an accountant in a cable factory, and she started her own business selling jeans and steel jewelry since she can make profits week to week, instead of waiting until the end of the month for her paycheck from her other job. She used her loan to buy more jeans and jewelry to sell, and she also invested in her other business that she has now shut down, the sale of motorcycles. The part of the loan that she invested in jeans and jewelry has increased her profits. She likes taking out loans from this institution, Agrocapital, because the loans are very short-term and the interest is not too high (30%) compared to her other options. In addition, they do not require all of the documents that formal would require, like proof of home ownership or mortgage. In the future, she is hoping to be the local director of the saleswomen of the Brazilian jewelry company with which she currently works.

Cecelia simultaneously works in a tire company and has her own business selling silver jewelry. She buys the jewelry from a company called ¨Casa de Jollera.¨ The loan helped Cecelia to buy more jewelry to sell, and it has increased her profits. There is a group of families that are her loyal clients, and she also finds more clients by selling door-to-door. In the future, she would like to open up her own store.

Note: There are some additional members since the group recently took out another loan with AgroCapital.

If these entrepreneurs interested you, consider lending to more AgroCapital clients here.