Elena

Loan description:

Elena Carpio is a 62 year old married woman with four adult children. The youngest is still in college. Her 63 year old husband, Hilario, works as a local farmer. In a village of Nueva Ecija province, Elena manages a progressing business that provides useful and affordable consumable merchandise to the community such as biscuits, breads, instant goods, refreshments and toiletries. She also sells a few kilos of vegetables a day that she acquires from the public market, few kilometres away. These include onions, cabbages, garlic, tomatoes and ginger. Her shop has become a very good source of income for her family in the past 15 years. In fact it had managed to cover the daily expenses of her children when they were still studying. Today, her children are returning back the favour by giving her small amounts of additional capital to help in the improvement of the business. Elena is also a member of the microfinance organisation, Alalay sa Kaunlaran, for more than a year. She has also received a loan worth $788 (30,000 Philippine pesos) which will be used to purchase larger volumes of stock including other kind of vegetables. Elena is willing to repay her loan over a period of twelve months.