Dung Nguyen Thi

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Dung Nguyen Thi by Mekong Plus in Viet Nam. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 4 - 6 months, Mekong Plus will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

It is very good for her when she got the loan. She has expanded her business and gets more profit. She pays her loan back on time.

Dung lives in a small house with her husband Tran Van Thang and their three young girls, ages 14, 12, and 2. Dung sells groceries from their home while Thang works as a day laborer. However, due to the nature of his work, Thang is only able to find work 15 days out of the month. He earns about 50,000 VND ($1.87) per day. The grocery store is the family’s only source of steady income. They earn about 15,000 VND (approximately $1) per day from the store. The money is just enough to make ends meet. However, whenever the family needs additional money, Dung closes her store for the day to work as a day laborer. Dung used to work as a day laborer before they received a loan from Mekong Plus to open the grocery store. However, work was often too unstable and difficult. Having the grocery store has made it a little easier on Dung and the family. With the money from the store, they are able to send their two older girls to school.

They have been living in Tanh Linh for 3 years now. They moved here from Thanh Hoa, a small town hundreds of kilometers away. Life in Thanh Hoa was extremely difficult. They were unable to make a living there, so they decided to move south. The family and the business are both doing very well. They were recently able to purchase a refrigerator to keep their food from spoiling and the drinks cold. They plan to continue to ask for a loan from Mekong Plus to expand their grocery store. They have successfully repaid their previous loans. The loans have helped the family a great deal, and they are thankful for the help from Mekong Plus and Kiva.