We visited Magali del Rocio Pardo Jaramillo on Tuesday 18 August at her restaurant in an area called Las Pitas in the northern part of the city of Loja. Magali is 21 and received a loan about six months ago. She has made several on-time repayments so far and the loan is repayable over 24 months. With the money she received she made some general improvements to her premises but mainly used the loan to buy an industrial oven as well as larger cooking pots, new tables and chairs. She used to serve food from a converted garage with only one table, which was not ideal, but moved to her current premises around one year ago. This is her first loan and she is grateful to have received it through the microfinance institution Fundacion FACES and funded by lendwithcare – she would not have been able to receive it from a conventional bank because they tend not to provide loans to persons below the age of 25. Magali employs a full-time assistant to help her serve customers and is open from around 10 am to around 8pm each day. She serves food throughout the day and this includes rice, chicken and meat but on the day we visited was limited to traditional Ecuadorian snacks such as ‘tamales’, ‘quimbolitos’ (made from maize and often wrapped in banana leaves) and ‘empanadas’ (cheese pasties) which are usually served with coffee. She reckons that on average her daily sales are around $80-90, of which she reckons that around $20 is her daily profit. This is actually double what she used to make about a year ago when working from the garage. Update submitted by Ajaz Ahmed Khan and Carlos Cobos.