Virginia

Virginia is 52 years old and married with eight children. Three of her children still remains under her care and they are still attending local school. Her husband is Rogelio and he works as a welder in one of construction company in Cebu city. Virginia has been employed in tailoring business for many years but instead of clothes, she is into making "sako bag". Later she decided to start her own business to earn more income to help her husband in dealing with their finances.

"Sako bag" is a bag made of coarse material used for storage and handling of various commodities, such as potatoes, coffee, meat and etc. For the past ten years of running the business, Virginia Larita had bought a total of four sewing machine. Two of her sewing machines are still working fine while the other two are completely damage. She hired tailors before but decided to quit to start their own business. Now one of her daughters is helping her in running the business. She is training her daughter on how to manage the business for in the future someone will take over the business since Virginia is getting older. Mostly, she finish about 20 dozens of sako bag per day. Three times a week she makes deliveries to various store owners in the public market of Don Andres Soriano and in the town of Toledo. One of her child who is married lives in the municipality of Liloan, she also runs the same business. Virginia's daughter also delivers her finished products (bulk) once a month since her place is far. Customers can choose from large (75/dozen), medium (65/dozen), small sizes (60/dozen) of her sako bag. She also make sako bag without handle. This sako bag without handle are mostly sold to fish and meat stall owners.

There village has a mandate not to use plastic bags every weekends. Her orders of sako bag increases since that ordinance has been implemented. To access more working capital for her business, Virginia applied for her third loan to the MFI, Lamac Multi-Purpose Cooperative. She has been a member for over a year now. She will use the loan to buy 4,000 pieces of unused (reuseable) cement sacks from her trusted supplier of these materials. Each sack would cost 3.30 pesos (about £ 0.050) per piece. She wanted to maintain good volume of her sacks so she could meet the demand of her growing customers. Virginia will continue to work hard in running the business because she still have to earn to support her three children who attends secondary schooling in different level.