Chaska Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to CHASKA Group, consisting of SONIA GOYZUETA BAYONA, ELIZABETH BARAZORDA LUNA, NATHALY GOYZUETA JURADO, NIEVES ANARA HUAMANI, JACINTO AUCAILLE ROCCA, MILUSKA SAVEDRA VELASCO, BERTHA TTITO HUALLPAMAITA, ROXANA EMPERATRIZ VILLENA MOGROVEJO, MILAGROS SATURNINA YANQUE OJEDA, JUDITH YESICA HUALLPAMAITA , MICHAEL PALOMINO GUILLEN by Asociación Arariwa in Peru. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 4 months of this loan, Asociación Arariwa will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

On Friday evening I visited the Chaska Village Bank’s second loan repayment meeting at Asociacion Arariwa’s office in Cusco. Unfortunately, most of the group members were unable to attend the meeting. The group’s president, Sonia Goyzueta, gave birth to a baby girl less than a week earlier, so she sent her husband to the meeting to pay off her loan installment. Elizabeth Barazorda is a veterinarian and had an operation to perform. Several other members paid their installments at the Arariwa office before the meeting, while others showed up more than an hour late (I was unable to stay long enough to chat with them).

The group has now repaid two loan installments successfully, with the exception of one member. Jacinto Aucaille works for Peru’s National Institute of Culture, the organization that administers the Incan archeological ruins in the Cusco area. Apparently, the institution has had some internal problems, and Jacinto says he hasn’t been paid since January. For this reason, he has been unable to pay his loan installments in full and on time. To make the situation even more complicated, Jacinto was recently transferred from Cusco to Machu Picchu (a few hours away by train), separating him from his family and making it even more difficult for him to attend Chaska’s monthly meetings. For these reasons, Jacinto has decided to leave the group. He has promised to repay his loan with interest as soon as possible, though he will no longer be required to make monthly deposits in a savings account.

Roxana Villena, another member of the Chaska group, is a first-time village bank member. For the past ten years, she has owned and operated a day care center for children in the city of Cusco. She takes care of twelve children between the ages of three and five with the help of her sister. Roxana used her Kiva loan of 800 soles to buy decorations and art materials for her daycare. The business is doing well enough, she says, though she enrolls fewer children than she would like to. She has space for 50 kids and usually has about 25, but right now she has just half that many. There is a lot of competition amongst childcare providers in Cusco. “They’re like corner stores,” says Roxana, commenting on the large number of providers. Roxana clearly loves her job and enjoys working with children. She takes the kids to the park, helps them plant flowers, and teaches them about the world around them. She has different fruit trees at the center so that the kids can pick and eat the fruit. Her next project is to buy baby chicks and rabbits for them to help raise. “They learn, they enjoy, they behave themselves… they are educated to be good children.” she says. This is Roxana’s first ever loan, she says it has been a positive experience so far.

Note: Because of the delay between when loans are repaid to Arariwa and when they are reported and wired to Kiva, the group appears to have repaid just one loan installment, when in fact they have repaid two. Repayments may take up to six weeks to be processed, recorded and deposited into lenders’ accounts—please be patient!