Follow-up visit to Luisa’s bakery in Guatemala

On April 23rd I visited the bakery of Luisa and Luis in Tecpán, Guatemala. Luisa is a client of Fafidess, a leading MFI in Guatemala that provides microcredits, training and technical assistance to groups of Guatemalan indigienous women with limited resources. My last visit was back in August 2005. The business has been growing steadily on the back of new acquisitions of institutional clients (hotels and restaurants in the area). Monthly sales have more than doubled from Q 16,000 to Q 35,000 (USD 2000 to USD 4375) during this period. There were two other areas where a lot of progress could be seen. As the business increased its clients to hotels and restaurants that need invoice, the bakery has slowly moved to the formal sector and now they hire an external accountant for bookkeeping. The other change which impressed me the most was on the education of the children. In 2005 Luisa’s 3 older daughters: Angela, Rosy and Carmen (who were then 17,15 and 13) were helping at the bakery so they could only attend Saturday/Sunday school. Nelson the only boy at 9 years old was attending full time school and the youngest girl Sonia, 5 years old was at home. I had asked then Luisa if Sonia would be able to attend full time school next year. Luisa said maybe. During our current visit, Nelson and Sonia came back from school wearing their uniforms. Yes Sonia is now attending full time school. Furthermore, Angela, now 21 has finshed the weekend school and told me she wanted to enroll to University to study business administration! See photos of this visit.

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