Julia Maria Vega

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Julia Maria Vega by AFODENIC in Nicaragua. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 9 months of this loan, AFODENIC will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

In March, you helped fund a loan on Kiva to Julia Maria Vega, who requested a loan in order to purchase construction materials to replace her front wall, currently made of wood, with cement blocks. Earlier today we had the chance to check in with Julia and see how this pursuit has worked out for her.

Unfortunately, Julia was unable to use her loan as intended. Julia owns a pulpería - a sort of grocery store that offers a wide variety of products and is often run out of the front of the owner’s home - and the store is her source of income. When business is good in the pulpería, she can invest in something else, but when it is not so good she has to use her loan to buy the goods she sells. Otherwise, since sales are low, she wouldn’t be able to buy more items to sell, and if she can’t sell anything, she won’t be able to pay back her loan. As a result, Julia used the loan to purchase products to sell like rice, oil, and cosmetics. Despite the troubles she has been having with her business, Julia is optimistic because sales are always better around Christmastime, she told us. In general her most popular offerings are food products, especially chicken, rice, and oil.

On Monday, Julia will go to the branch of office of AFODENIC, Kiva’s field partner here in Managua, Nicaragua, to finish repaying her loan and to take out a new one. In fact, she signed some papers for her new loan today when we visited her. After opening her pulpería in 2001, Julia has been borrowing with AFODENIC for about six years, but in April she will begin receiving social security payments and will no longer take out loans, as she will use her pension for what she now uses loans to cover.

Julia lives with her son and his two sons, her grandsons, who are 5 and 11 years old. Both are in school. In the long run, Julia still aims to replace that front wall of her house. Check out the picture below to see Julia in her pulpería, next to the wall she would still like to improve. Thank you for reading this journal update.

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