Lerma M. is from the village of Cabaritan. She is 37 years old. Lerma is the group leader of an eight-member group loan offered by ASKI. While each member of the group receives an individual loan, they are all collectively responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults. The official name of this borrowing group is Lerma M.'s Group.

Lerma is married and has 5 school-aged children. To make a living, Lerma owns & operates a furniture making business. The main source of income for the business comes from making & selling general household furniture to local businesses and community members. Lerma has been engaged in her business for over 3 years and earns approximately 10,000 PHP a month for these activities.

In 2009, Lerma joined ASKI to gain access to financial services to help improve her living situation and ability to engage in business activities. Lerma has successfully repaid a previous loan of 6,000 PHP from ASKI. This previous loan was used to purchase wood for her furniture business. Lerma is requesting a new loan of 9,000 PHP, which will be used to purchase materials for her furniture making business, such as wood and varnish. This loan will be the third loan taken out by Lerma from ASKI. She plans to use the additional revenue generated from the business to improve/expand it.

About ASKI:

ASKI is one of the most successful microfinance institutions in the Philippines. It has 25 branches covering the Central and Northeastern areas. Its clients are mostly farmers, fisherfolk, and small entrepreneurs.

*Note: To maximize efficiency and reduce costs, this loan was posted using a template to automate the translation by Kiva. Given that manual translation of entrepreneur profiles is costly, Kiva created this template for our Field Partner to allow them to continue to post loans in English while providing quality and accurate information to Kiva lenders.