Avepozo, Togo Retail | Retail
Afiwa is a 35-year-old married mother. She lives in the district of Avepozo with her four children. Afiwa sells general foodstuffs out of her shop. She gets her supplies three times per month from market. Afiwa is requesting this loan to purchase cans of soft-drinks, as well as packs of other items. Afiwa plans on growing her business with this financial support. By doing this, she will be able to earn greater profits. This will give her the financial independence to take better care of her children.
Assilassimé Solidarité (“Hand in Hand” in Ewe, the local language) is a nonprofit microfinance institution in Togo founded in 2012. The organization is distinguished in the Togolese microfinance landscape because it offers services only to vulnerable individuals in the Lomé area, particularly the disabled, single mothers, sex workers, people living with HIV, and widows. Kiva loans made through Assilassimé help some of Togo’s most vulnerable people, including the very poor, to start or grow businesses and establish stable livelihoods.
Because Assilassimé is a young microfinance institution that has yet to establish a track record, loans made through this organization carry a higher level of risk than typical loans on Kiva.
Our Field Partners often work with borrowers over a series of loans as the borrowers build credit, take out bigger loans, and expand their businesses. In order to make it easier for our Field Partners to post loans for borrowers who have been listed on Kiva before, we allow them to post successive and concurrent loans for their Kiva borrowers. This means that our Field Partners are able to post a borrower’s second, third, etc., loan on Kiva without having to re-enter all of the borrower’s information.
This borrower has been listed on Kiva before, so you’ll see an updated loan description, as well as excerpts of the original descriptions from earlier loans. Most borrowers take out loans consecutively, meaning that they receive a second loan after having repaid the first. However, sometimes our Field Partners give out concurrent loans, allowing borrowers to take out one primary loan and a secondary “add-on” loan along with it. These “add-on” loans are typically smaller than the borrower’s primary loan and serve a different purpose. Because Field Partners can now post loans as successive and concurrent loans, you will be able to track borrower progress over time and see the various ways a borrower is working with our Field Partners through funds from Kiva’s lenders.
A loan of $450 helps Afiwa to purchase 14 crates of canned soft-drinks, three boxes of spaghetti and biscuits.