Adding to basket
Maria Nubia M. D. T., 57, lives in the Marchuela area of Usme, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the Colombian capital of Bogota. She is married and has twelve children who range in age from 12 to 39. She works with her husband selling hardware, tools, car parts, construction supplies, electrical parts and even inflatable toys. This is her fourth Fundacion loan and the previous loans have allowed her to increase her working capital, something that she thinks has greatly contributed to her financial situation and her way of living. She is applying for a 1,200,000-peso loan that she will use to buy tools--saws, screwdrivers, etc.--and more inflatible toys for her business.
Maria Nubia is a native of the "departamento" of Caldas in the Eje Cafetero region of western Colombia. She spent twenty years traveling around Colombia with her husband who worked for a carnival, both of them going from place to place, selling fun. At the beginning of the 1990s, the family settled in Barranquilla where they bought a house and opened a shop. For the sake of her husband's health, the family resettled in Bogota in 2008 and, happily, his health is now better. Maria Nubia's goal is to buy a house in the capital because they had to sell their Barranquilla house. She wants to live in the same neighborhood as the shop because there are lots of businesses nearby, it's convenient and the people are friendly.
Translated from Spanish by Kiva volunteer Jere Wiseman. View original language description.
