I wanted to share with you an update I got on my loan I made via Kiva to a group of Bolivians, they were creating a small group to reloan the funds to other entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n
I got this update November 20th last year:<\/p>\n
“This is an update on your loan to MARANATHA 2 Group in Bolivia. I\u00a0visited Lucy and her next-door neighbor Felipa, both members of the\u00a0Maranatha group, one Friday afternoon in Montero, a small city of\u00a0100,000 in eastern Bolivia. Lucy was at the market when we arrived, so\u00a0we sat under the shade of her mango tree to enjoy some homegrown Lucy sells meals from her\u00a0home in the evenings, and she used her Kiva loan of 4,000 bolivianos (US\u00a0$557) to buy a refrigerator and some ingredients to make her\u00a0specialties: tripe and pig\u2019s stomach. She also sells chicha and som\u00f3, a The smell of freshly baked bread wafts into\u00a0Lucy\u2019s yard. I follow my nose next door, where Felipa and her\u00a0granddaughters are hard at work baking today\u2019s batch of bread. Felipa,\u00a0like Lucy, is a founding member of the Maranatha group and has\u00a0participated in all four if its loan cycles. She started her business\u00a0selling donuts and pan de arroz (bread made with rice flour and mashed\u00a0yucca). Then she started making regular bread, and today she sells Felipa used her Kiva loan of 1,800\u00a0bolivianos (US$257) to buy flour, lard, cheese and other ingredients to\u00a0make bread. She works seven days a week and sells about 230 bolivianos\u2019\u00a0(US$33) worth of bread each day, earning 60 bolivianos (US$8) in\u00a0profits. She says she enjoys working with the group, since the women all\u00a0know one another very well and everyone is responsible and punctual. She\u00a0has taken out individual loans before, she tells me, but prefers the This made my week!\u00a0<\/p>\n I printed it off, emailed to my friends and reread over and over.<\/p>\n Not only had I been to Bolivia to La Paz (near Montero) but the average income is $1,100 usd\/year (Source: World Bank, 2006<\/a>) and…<\/p>\n Felipa is now making about 350 days * $8 = $2800 a year! In a country where 40% of the population ~ 3.7 million people live in extreme poverty<\/strong> providing entrepreneurs with micro loans enables them to excel. \u00a0<\/p>\n What really really gets me excited is the flow on affects, Felipa can employee, invest, increase consumption thus reinvesting in the local economy. \u00a0<\/p>\n In developing countries income can flow through the economy many times in a year (adding up to potentially $10,000\/year to the GDP). \u00a0<\/p>\n Most importantly micro loans provide capability to those willing to give it a go who in turn inspire others around them. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Given not all Kiva loans have updates, the ones that do are worth it, and best yet I got all my money back! (reinvested in other loans). \u00a0If your still here and haven’t loaned, why not? Hop over to Kiva<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wanted to share with you an update I got on my loan I made via Kiva to a group of Bolivians, they were creating a small group to reloan the funds to other entrepreneurs. I got this update November 20th last year: “This is an update on your loan to MARANATHA 2 Group in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[372,439,632,680],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ntamarinds with her husband while we waited. Lucy soon returned with bags\u00a0full of produce to cook the night\u2019s dinner.<\/em><\/p>\n
\npopular drink made with boiled corn, sugar, cinnamon and clove. Her\u00a0cooking must have quite a reputation, because her customers come from\u00a0near and far just to get their hands on a plate. Sales are good, she\u00a0tells me, and she\u2019s planning to stick with the group for its next loan\u00a0cycle (its fifth).<\/em><\/p>\n
\nseveral varieties of rolls, some sweet and some savory. I can\u2019t resist\u00a0trying one of her piping hot rolls, which is rich, white and fluffy with\u00a0a sugary topping\u2014very delicious.<\/em><\/p>\n
\ngroup loan because it doesn\u2019t involve so much paperwork. Like Lucy,\u00a0Felipa plans to continue working with Maranatha in future loan cycles.\u00a0Out of curiosity, I ask Felipa what Maranatha means, and she shrugs\u00a0and laughs\u2014neither she nor her loan officer, Julio Cesar, can remember\u00a0who thought up the name or why. “<\/em><\/p>\n