Women We've Met Recently
By rfay - Posted on July 27th, 2007

Clara Ajsoc (View on flickr)
Last week Nancy met Clara Ajsoc in the highland village of Santa Clara La Laguna. Clara used her Friendship Bridge loan to buy a calf, which she raised, only to lose it to a sudden illness, leaving a young calf behind. But she bottlefed that one and raised it up successfully, and she now sells milk and cheese, where she had no livelihood before. And she wants to get another calf.

Catarina Cox Perez (View on flickr)
We've also met lots of more mundane people, storekeepers and weavers and clothing sellers, who are just battling the day-to-day struggle to pay for their kids'education. For them to come up with those few dollars per month for school fees and notebooks is an amazing battle. But so many assure us that they're absolutely committed to their kids having a better life. And almost all we've met have kids who are getting at least some education. We've met many, many women who have absolutely no education. They sign their loan papers with a thumbprint. It's just the normal way.

Elena Coché and family (View on flickr)
You can look through all the stories of the women we've met on the Kiva site. To see if there are any available to make loans to, click here.
If you search for "in need" businesses, you may not find any on a particular day, because people seem to snatch them up. But go ahead and fund a businessperson in a different part of the world anyway. It's loads of fun.