Emelia

Emelia Armecin is a married woman with three adult children. All of her children are married and been living separately. She is now 58 years old and husband Joelito is 61. They both live in the village of Putat which is in the town of Tuburan in Cebu province. They have a house in the city but it is quite far from where they do business so decided to stay in Putat and let her one child and two grandchildren lived in their house.

Ten years ago, the couple has been managing a mango farm found in the village of Putat. The owner of the farm is her relative and they give share of their yearly harvest to the owner. They financed all the expenses incurred. She said there are about 50 mango trees in the farm. They employ fifteen to twenty-five people to help during the application of flower-inducing sprays and during bagging of mango fruit to lessen the physical damage of the fruit. These practices will help to improve the commercial value of the mangoes. They harvest once a year, mostly September where mangoes are most likely not in high supply in the market. By then, they can sell it for higher price.

For the past years, Emelia's husband Joelito also manage a hog raising business. Currently, they have four sows and two of these are pregnant. They also have ten piglets to feed. They do not have a problem in selling the fully grown pigs since he already have regular buyers who buys his pigs.

Recently, Emelia decided to start another business. She will build a store and plan to sell fishing supplies and gasoline. Her store is near the sea where fishermen pass by the area and mostly they buy their supplies in the nearest city. She already did her market survey before she decided to operate the business. She also plan to start pork barbecue business every afternoon. To access more working capital, she applied for her third loan to the co-op she is a member to called Lamac Multi-Purpose Cooperative. She will use the loan money to have additional funds to finish the store she is building, buy fishing supplies, gasoline and animal feeds. Emelia hopes her new business will progress for her to continuously earn income and deal with their everyday needs and provide help for her child and grandchildren. She promise to repay the loan over the period of eight months.