I’ve been slacking again, but I took the opportunity today to update our Kiva project.

Mwanamisi is a married woman with 3 children, all of whom attend school. She owns a house that neither has electricity nor piped water. Her greatest monthly expenses are food and school fees. For the past five years, she has operated a weaving business. She uses coconut fronds to make roofing materials to sell from her home to her customers. She faces a major challenge of high transport expenses and seasonality. She dreams of starting a shop. With the Kshs. 40,000 she wants to purchase additional coconut fronds and increase her products. She decided to join Yehu to access loans to uplift her living standards.

Mohammad is 20 years old and lives in Gaza with his parents, who depend on him financially. He started work on his own farm recently; he raises and sells sheep and sheep products. His dream is to enlarge his business. He needs this youth loan to cover costs, so he asked Ryada for funds to build an additional enclosure for his sheep. He will be able to gain income and ensure economic stability for his family.

Grace is a 34-year-old married woman with three children living in Kagadi, Uganda. She operates a stationary business in Kagadi, which she has run for a period of five years. She got start-up capital from savings, as she first worked in a hotel as a waitress. Inadequate capital and price fluctuations are challenging factors affecting her business. She would like to educate her children and hire employees to help her expand her business. Grace wants a loan to buy books, pens, and reams of paper to sell.

This client, Masika, is the president of the loan association Espoir. A brave and tireless woman and an entrepreneur, she is 60 years old, divorced, and the mother of seven children. Among the births, there are twins. All of the children have their own homes already. Masika sells “mandale”, a local beverage. She started her business with her own funds from her husband before they divorced. Then she benefited from an initial loan as additional funding around 2008 from the microfinance institution Hekima. She says that this business has brought up her children, that is, the profits from her business went toward savings, food, and schooling costs. Masika makes her sales out of her home. However, she just obtained her 12th loan. This client decided to reduce the loan amount because a financial crisis is looming. This new loan must serve to supply her with the ingredients for making “mandale” drink (2 sacks of corn, sorghum, etc.) In addition, her ambition is to buy more plots of land for her children. This client thanks Hekima and her partners for their actions helping poor women with low incomes to become autonomous.

Sammy is a prospective student applying for a loan to start work on a Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications at Strathmore University.

So there it is. I will try to remember to bug you to help me pick loans (as my usual thing is just to pick African women) when our money comes in at the beginning of June.

For the month of October, we made $46.38, and loaned $50.
For the month of November, we made $65.81, and loaned $50.
For the month of December, we made $44.76, and loaned $50.
For the month of January, we made $58.59.
For the month of February, we made $57.33 and loaned $125.

Total amount loaned so far: $275
Total loan funds repaid: $33.07
Fund balance: $23.47