By Betsy Ramser Jaime
Beatrice Moraa is a hardworking woman, and a single mother to two teenage children. With an open minded approach to life, she believes that we have the potential to improve or better our lives and through doing so we can also empower others to do the same.
Although she had a fairly average childhood and grew up in a family of 6, her world was shaken when her mother died when she was in high school. As her pillar of strength, her death affected Beatrice deeply. After high school, she got married but once the marriage ended she was left with the burden of providing for two young children.
While she has a part-time job, she’s found that she doesn’t earn enough through that job to adequately support her family. Therefore, she determined that a side hustle would be a great way to supplement her income from her job. Through her business she supplies toiletries to hotels and has also started getting orders to supply housekeeping and kitchen items. She says that she chose this particular business because the goods were readily available.
When she’s not busy working or running her business, she is also part of an organized dance troupe of around twenty ladies. She notes that their objective is, ‘to empower ourselves economically with the aim of encouraging more ladies in decision making. Under the group we have a traditional dance troupe which we use as an income activity as well as for culture preservation.’
Beatrice serves as a great example that small loans really add up over time. Since she requested her first Zidisha funded loan in February 2017, she has had five total loans and all of them have been under $100. When she first discovered Zidisha, she was struggling to build up her working capital. She found that she had no problem finding orders, but didn’t have the necessary money to buy enough product to meet the demand and had to turn down orders. Therefore, she used her initial loan of $9 to build up her fund for buying inventory.
A few months later, she requested her second loan of $14 in April of 2017. With this loan, she bought two bales of toilet paper to re-sell to a hotel that she had secured a contract with as a supplier. The cost of the tissue was ksh. 1520 and then she was able to re-sell it for ksh. 2400 making a profit of ksh. 880 or ($8.50 USD).
Seeing success with her first two loans, Beatrice prepared herself for a $21 Zidisha funded loan in May 2017 to purchase five soft brooms. She was excited that once she was able to sell these five brooms, she would be one step closer to one of her big goals, purchasing a laptop computer for her college age daughter as she prepared to write her thesis.
On July 10, 2017, Beatrice shared this inspiring update with her lenders, ‘With the cash I bought housekeeping items as indicated early and I used the profit to make a down payment for a second hand laptop for my daughter. I intend to finish paying for it soon for her to use it for her project. My daughter is excited already she is so willing to assist with deliveries whenever she is free. The most interesting part of all this…my son is going round looking for orders. He wants to have his own clientele. He is willing to also join the Zidisha family and this is due to the friendly atmosphere exhibited by the Zidisha family.’
As she set her sights on another loan, she continued with the same goal in mind of slowly and surely setting aside money for her daughter’s laptop. For this fourth loan, she requested $32 and used the loan to buy five wheeled mopping buckets which she could re-sell and earn a little over $1 USD per bucket.
Recently, Beatrice prepared for her largest loan yet, of $79 which she requested in September 2017. While her profit margins had remained fairly low on her first few products, she was ready to up her game. She prepared to purchase a few bales of jumbo toilet tissue, making a profit of $14.94 USD per bale. With the profits, she is excited to re-invest in her business so that she can continue to purchase larger quantities of products in the future. In addition, as her daughter will be sitting for her final exams in the future, Beatrice hopes to clear her college fee balance. She says, ‘this will be a great achievement for my children in general, especially my daughter.’
On September 8, 2017, Beatrice took to her discussion page and shared, ‘Zidisha is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am really grateful to my lenders for the support they have given me and my children by extension. Since I joined Zidisha things have been really easy for me because of the additional capital.’
It’s clear that Beatrice and her family have a great future ahead of them. She even adds that her dance troupe recently participated in the International Investment Summit where they were the main entertainers. She notes, ‘I must confess it was a memorable occasion. I thank God for the opportunity and exposure and we hope and believe that this is just the beginning of many more to come.’
Would you like to invest in another family like Beatrice’s? Head on over to our Lend page and check out more amazing entrepreneurs that are changing the lives of their families and communities.
