Success Stories

Reina Pérez

Reina with Va Bien Executives Marianne and Greg Gimble

Reina, who has been blind since she was nineteen years old, operates two small businesses from her home: a colmadito, which is a small grocery store, and a fantasia, which sells personal feminine care products. With her earnings, she has bought a refrigerator to sell cold refreshments, and a freezer to sell ice cream.

It is remarkable to watch a client come in and purchase an item from Reina. She knows where all the products in her small store are placed - there are many of them - and despite her handicap, she can easily retrieve any of them upon request.

Her success has been of great aid to her family. It provides them with clothes, shoes, and medicine. She has also been able to improve her house, adding a new room and reinforcing the roof and walls to stand up better to hurricanes and small storms. In addition, with the extra money, she can now afford to house her two children – before, they lived with their father. This is critical because of her proximity to available schooling and an Esperanza computer center that is sponsored by Microsoft. The school near her husband was full and could not accommodate their children. Now one of the children now wants to be a doctor, and the other an engineer.

Before entering into the Esperanza program, Reina had taken loans from informal lenders. They charged such high interest rates that her business could not grow. As she says, "I have had this business not to maintain it, but so that the business will remain." Obviously, Reina prefers to keep or invest her profits, and the modest interest payments charged by Esperanza have allowed her to do so.

It is a heartwarming and fortunate experience to meet Reina, and it is no surprise that the members of her community admire her greatly because of her strength and intelligence.

Esperanza Computer Classroom, sponsored by Microsoft. The boy looking at the teacher is Reina's son.

Mélida Mota

Back in 1999, Mélida Mota took out her first loan of $90 from Esperanza. She used the funds to buy underwear to sell in her neighborhood – true to Va Bien's heart! To expand her items available for sale, she decided to take out a second loan from Esperanza to begin making and selling ice cream, and selling drinking water sold in small plastic bags.

With her loan, she was able to buy ingredients such as sugar, flavorings, and water. She used the loan as leverage to save money by buying in bulk.

Every two days Mélida makes over 250 ice cream bags that sell for six cents each - a very affordable price for people, especially children, in her neighborhood. She sells local tropical flavors such as pineapple, coconut, and mango, as well as traditional flavors such as grape, strawberry, and orange. She is always experimenting with new flavors and is now combining different fruits and watching to see what sells best. Mélida also makes and sells fruit juices with local tamarind seeds, cherries and other fruit.

A true entrepreneur, Mélida was eager to expand her product line. She now sells food processors, toasters, toaster ovens, electric cookers, blenders, floor and bathroom cleaning supplies, and liquid soaps.

Mélida now travels to isolated locations to sell her cleaning products, which are produced by a neighbor and fellow Esperanza Associate. There she sells to people who cannot afford the bus fare to the city or are otherwise unable to leave their neighborhoods. Mélida even has her own "sales agent" who sells the cleaning supplies in other neighborhoods.

Marianne and Greg Gimble with Porfirio in his storage room

As previously stated, the large majority of Esperanza’s loans are made to women – 86%. That leaves 14% for the men, including Porfirio Villalugo. He purchases leftover bread from bakeries and resells to local people that are too far away or have no means of transportation. He used his loans from Esperanza to purchase a small motorbike, which he uses to distribute the bread. A very ambitious man, Porfirio aspires to use his next series of loans to purchase a pickup truck, which he could leverage to distribute much more bread than currently possible on his bike – although he does manage to carry a remarkable amount of bread on his back when riding it. “Remember my name,” he says, “because you will be hearing about me in the future”. That’s real hope, and something that would not be possible without the aid of Microcredit.