Tis the Season of Giving

December 2007

Each year the holiday season arrives, bringing with it a feeling of warmth and raising spirits. Smiles reach eyes more often and sincere greetings are exchanged more often. The season is also evokes a time for counting blessings, sharing, gift giving and charitable donations. Want to extend that feeling of good cheer? Crystal Coding Concepts invites you to take a look at one way for doing just that.

Consider one of our favorite organizations - Kiva. Crytal Coding Concepts feel a corporate responsibility to assist other small businesses to grow. For years, Kiva has allowed us to fulfill our responsibility on a global level through small loans - as small as $25.00. Each loan is a hand up, not a hand out; plus, when repaid, that same investment can be reloaned. The experience is gratifying.

Juma along side of his radio shop sign.

Because of how Kiva is organized, you have no real overhead, nor do you have to monitor your investment. Loan recipients journal their use of the money. You can respond, keeping yourself connected to the business you have chosen to assist. Kiva emails lenders the report and links. Below is a peek at a journal entry from one of our entrepeneurs or click this link to view report and comments directly on the Kiva site.

Kiva Update on Quesos Eleuteria: Eleuteria Hancco Cáceres de Ma

This is an update on Quesos Eleuteria written by Maren Misner:

Meeting with Eleuteria and her husband is quite an experience. The day has turned into a dust storm, and over the wind and squinting we converse in a mixture of Spanish and their native language Quechua. In a form that reminds me of the game ‘telephone’, questions are asked and then reiterated by myself and the loan officers, battling against the noise, and then translated into Quechua for Eleuteria by her husband. The answers come back the same way, and we smile at our methods of communication but somehow understand each other perfectly well.

Eleuteria and her husband are running a successful cheese making business, and they are happy to report that since joining their village bank their monthly income has increased an impressive 40%. Before joining Prisma they were taking out loans from a regular bank, but the outlandish interest rates were eating all their profits. They are living much more comfortably now, with less stress of repayment, and the ability to put aside money each month in savings. They have three children, ages 17, 12, and 10, and their oldest has just started at the university in neighboring Puno.

Eleuteria used this loan to purchase milk, which she buys from neighbors who happen to be Kiva clients as well. She can buy milk for just under one Sol (about 30 cents) per liter, and was able to buy 200 liters with this loan. Eleuteria sells her cheese two days a week at markets in Puno and Las Minas, two neighboring cities. The other days she spends making the cheese. Eleuteria and her husband were kind enough to give us a block of cheese, and it was absolutely delicious!

Filed under: Holiday 2007