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Husband and wife Sonny and Jennifer Avila started working for a handicraft company in 1990, and when the firm closed down five years later, they decided to put up their own. They pooled their savings and borrowed more money from relatives to raise P20,000: money they used to buy materials and equipment for molding and casting. They hired 15 to 20 people to start making 800 to 1,000 pieces a week of hand-painted miniature shoes, napkin rings, decorative figurines, and home accessories.

The Avilas quickly gained the experience and the clients to sustain the business early on—but not always the capital to meet big orders or to keep producing while waiting for customers to pay. In late 2004 they heard about TSPI Development Corp., a non-government organization offering financing to poor women, from neighbors in Taguig, and it happened that they could use extra money to make more handicrafts. Jennifer applied for a starting loan of P5,000 under the lending firm’s Kabuhayan Program 1 in November of the same year. “We would have approached them sooner had we known about them,” Sonny says.

The group required Jennifer to present a business proposal, barangay clearance, marriage certificate, residence certificate, and an ID. A representative then visited the Avilas’ workshop just above where they lived, and in a week they received their P5,000 loan and started paying P261 a week for the next 25 weeks. “It wasn’t hard coming up with the payments,” Jennifer says, adding the insurance package from Cocolife that came with their loan had made the lending firm doubly attractive. She has since taken out two more loans—one for P7,000 (P360 weekly payments for 25 weeks) and another for P9,000 (P463.80 weekly for 25 weeks). She plans to borrow for the fourth time to buy more raw materials.

The Avilas fill as much as P300,000 worth of orders a month and make as much as P100,000. Forty percent of their earnings go to buy raw materials (poly resin, fiberglass, silicon rubber, plaster of Paris, hardeners, lacquer, wood stain, water-based paints, etc.), 30 percent to pay employees, and the rest to boost their savings account. They have since bought their own house and invested in real estate in their home province, but Sonny wants to supply more stores and to join bazaars to expand their market. Indeed, things are looking up.

A LOAN FOR EVERY NEED
The principals of Tulay sa Pag-Unlad Inc. Development Corp. opened for business in 1981 to provide destitute women with small loans that they could use to start a business. It lent money to 25 small entrepreneurs in its first year, but now it serves more than 140,000 clients—of whom 99 percent are classified as poor—and lends an average of P7,480 to borrowers.

The Makati-based lending firm has 58 branches in Luzon and offers the following program loans:

Kabuhayan Program 1: Offers P3,000 to P15,000 for micro-enterprise development, livestock production, and housing and education to groups of women with at least 20 members. Loans are payable weekly for six months

Kabuhayan Program 2: Provides P15,000 to P50,000 in loans for business expansion or diversification

Sakbayan Lending Program: Offers the tricycle sector P75,000 up to P85,000 in loans payable up to 30 months. Tricycle drivers and operators may also avail themselves of the Tricycle Drivers and Operators Assistance Program that lends P10,000 to P50,000 to start a family business. All loans are payable in three to six months

Individual Loan Assistance Program: Offers P50,000 up to P500,000 to individual borrowers wanting to expand their businesses. This loan is payable in six to 24 months and requires real estate as collateral

Association for Social Advancement Program: Offers P1,000 to P10,000 in loans to groups of poor women running a business and with 10 to 40 members. Loans are payable in six months.

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