You CAN Have Your Cake AND Eat It Too!

Meet Julia - a 46 year old woman with 4 children who lives in the Cupiche province of Peru. Growing up, she always loved eating her mother's cakes and helping her bake. When Julia worked as a domestic mother in the past, she started to practice her mother's craft by baking and reading cookbooks. As her passion for baking grew, she decided to study Bakery at a local institute, where she mastered her skills.

Since 2010, her bakery, "Señor de Muruay" has been satisfying several sweet tooths (including mine). She named her bakery after a famous Peruvian image of Jesus Christ, referred to as the Señor de Muruahay. She wakes up at 4am every morning to start preparing her famous cakes and says the early rise is well worth it in order to be able to provide her children higher education.

In order to meet Julia, I had to wait a few weeks to pass due to the recent huaico that severely damaged the region she is living in. Due to climate change, every 20 or so years, a phenomenon referred to as "El Niño" occurs. This climate change is a contributing factor to the huaico, a flash flood caused by torrential rains occurring high in the mountains. This huiaco unfortunately left several people in the region homeless and jobless. Fortunately, Julia and her family (cakes as well) were unaffected by this natural disaster, minus the road closures.




Julia is part of a group called "Progresistas Del Cupiche" with 10 other members, each of whom have their own business. For example, Julia's sister provides a car wash service for interprovincial cars that arrive from various points in the Peruvian interior. The Progresistas Del Cupiche Group are already on their 13th Kiva loan! Since the group's first loan, each member has proven to succeed in being able to repay on time as well as grow his or her business.

In the future, Julia's dream is to be able to remodel and expand her kitchen with a larger and more industrial oven, which she believes will help her bakery thrive even more. In addition, she would like to improve the environment of her bakery both inside and outside to make it more attractive to customers. For example, she would like to have more space inside, as well as more tables and chairs. Kiva Lenders like yourself are making her dreams possible!

On behalf of Julia, she wishes to say, "Please continue supporting us and thank you so much for your support." Even though you probably learned throughout life that you can't have your cake and eat it too, I beg to differ. Julia makes delicous cakes and as evidenced by the below photo, eats it too! Luckily for me, she even shares! I believe that every Kiva borrower deserves a "piece" of every pie.


Please continue to support more talented entrepreneurs such as Julia by lending to EDAPROSPO at http://www.kiva.org/lend?partner_id=93&status=fundRaising&sortBy=Most+Recent