Adding to basket
Fifty-six-year-old Margarita shares that she only had a fourth grade education because her family needed her to help earn income by working on farms with them. She worked from age twelve until she was twenty when she got married to a bricklayer. Margarita had nine pregnancies but two of them died during labor. So, she raised seven children and six of them are married. They range in age from twenty to thirty-eight. She is the grandmother of fourteen! Margarita shares that all of her children had between four and eight years of formal education.
Five years ago, Margarita began selling traditional clothing and then two years later, she opened her tamale and “chuchito” business. She sells both two times weekly in the morning. Last year, she began raising chickens. Her goals are to have successful businesses, open her own storefront and display her colorful traditional clothing in an attractive way. She requests her first Kiva loan to buy corn, big pots and firewood to use for cooking.
Margarita joined six Maya K’iche women who also live in the department/state of Suchitepequez and formed the Friendship Bridge Trust Bank “Trabajadoras del Pito”. Several have the same businesses as Margarita while others work at their convenience stores and grow corn. They are happy to participate in the “Microcredit Plus” program of loans, monthly educational training and bi-monothly health care services.
Thank you, Kiva lenders, for helping these women help themselves!
In this group: Ana Maria , Maria Esperanza , Margarita, Gloria Catarina , Miriam Estefania , Claudia Catarina , Rosa Romelia
