A loan of $250 helped to purchase ingredients for her food production business.

I funded a microloan to Esterlina, a food vendor in the Philippines.

Esterlina's story

As a married parent of five children, Esterlina works hard to support her family. She has a food vending business in the Philippines, and also earns additional income from direct selling personal collection products. Esterlina is borrowing PHP 10,000 through NWTF to purchase ingredients for her food production business.

She hopes that her hard work will help her attain her dream to save enough money so she can afford to send her children to college.

In the Philippines, where Esterlina lives and works, the average annual income is only $7,000. This means that microloans even of just a few hundred dollars can be very helpful for entrepreneurs who need capital to grow their businesses, like Esterlina.

One day, Esterlina wants her business to reach a level of success where it is completely financially self-sufficient. It is not quite there, but with a microloan, and with a lot of hard work on Esterlina’s part, it could be there one day.

Microloan Partner

The field partner for this microloan is the Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF). The Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation, Inc. (NWTF) is a non-governmental organization established with an aim to help men and women achieve self-sufficiency, particularly in the province of Negros Occidental’s low-income communities. The organization offers its clients a wide variety of products, including loans for micro-entrepreneurs, hospital income benefits, life insurance, accidental death benefits and more. Kiva lenders’ funds will be used to expand the reach of these products to low-income urban and rural communities.

With the help of the Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation, I successfully funded this microloan to Esterlina! Now she can purchase the supplies that she needs in order to help grow her business. The larger her inventory is, the more food that she can sell, the more customers she can gain, and the more profits she can make. So, this microloan will help her to advance her business.

Although I funded this microloan to Esterlina, I will not be receiving any interest on it. Instead, I only intended the microloan to be a humanitarian offering to help an entrepreneur in need. The local field partner may receive interest, however.

There are many entrepreneurs around the world like Esterlina, who still need access to microloans. If you would like to fund a microloan to an entrepreneur in need, please feel free to visit kiva.org today!

Esterlina joins a growing number of small-scale business owners from developing countries like the Philippines who have received life-changing microloan from Dr. Joe Johnson and GoodField Investments. For more information, visit this website.

Notes

1. This article is based on https://www.kiva.org/lend/835382.