Grace Ngina Tutuma

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Grace Ngina Tutuma by Women`s Economic Empowerment Consort in Kenya. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 10 - 18 months, Women`s Economic Empowerment Consort will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Grace has fallen on some hard times with her steer business due to an untimely outbreak of Rift Valley Fever, which is very rare but fatal to cows. All ten of her steers have died but she is determined to press on and grow in other sectors. She has shifted her farming focus to goats for the present time, which she raises and sells as needed. Also, looking for another way to diversify her income in a way that is less vulnerable to disease, she has entered into the concrete industry, buying the raw cement material from miners and transporting it to manufacturing plants where she sells it to larger companies to be processed. She typically buys 15 tons of mined material each month at 800 Kenyan Shillings per ton and can sell it for 1200 Shillings per ton. She still prefers dealing with cows over concrete companies and as such is determined to rebuild her herd as quickly as possible. (66 KSH/1 USD)

Kiva recently notified you that your loan to the business or businesses above will not be repaid in full and is now considered defaulted. As a reminder, any amount of this loan that has been collected by Kiva is available to you as Kiva Credit. You can re-lend this Kiva Credit to another business, withdraw it or donate to Kiva on our website: www.kiva.org.

Reason for default:

All entrepreneur profiles on Kiva’s website are posted by local Field Partners. This particular business was posted by our Kenyan Field Partner, the Women’s Economic Empowerment Consort (WEEC).

WEEC is currently experiencing significant operational difficulties that have caused all active WEEC loans to default. It is important to note that in many cases the entrepreneur repaid the loan to WEEC in full and did benefit from your loan. However, WEEC has experienced operational problems caused by a number of factors, including the unexpected death of WEEC’s founder and Executive Director, poor management of funds, and economic and political unrest in Kenya. Together, these factors produced a situation where Kiva is unable to get a 100% clear account of your specific loan and recover your full loan amount from WEEC.

To learn more, please visit:

www.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=6

We hope you realize that this outcome is an exception to the norm when lending at Kiva and that you’ll give lending another chance. If you have any questions, please let us know and thanks again for your ongoing support.

Sincerely,

Shelby Clark

Kiva Staff