[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxoJ88WPnPU[/youtube]
Eduardo Castro Quiroz and his mother Martha live in a tiny, crumbling store at the end of a dusty street in El Progreso Carabayllo, a neighborhood in the cono norte area of Lima. Overflowing with dilapidated shanty homes and teeming with stray dogs, Eduardo’s street is a world apart from the over-manicured gardens and ritzy buildings of Miraflores, the southern area of the city where most extranjeras, or foreigners like me, live when they’re visiting Peru’s capital city.
Overwhelmed by this stark contrast, it’s easy for any extranjera to label Eduardo’s neighborhood as bleak and destitute – I admit to initially doing the same. But after spending a few hours with the Quiroz family, it is obvious that despite their impoverished surroundings, the residents on Eduardo’s street are far from hopeless.
Martha, like many others in the neighborhood, is a client of EDAPROSPO, Vittana’s partner here in Lima. With microloans and business training from EDAPROSPO, Martha has increased her savings, improved her business practices and received small amounts of credit to expand her store. Yet despite her success in EDAPROSPO’s Prosperidad program, she still does not have enough money to help her youngest son complete his college degree.
With the new Vittana loan he recently received from EDAPROSPO, however, 23-year-old Eduardo will finish his college degree in business administration at la Universidad de Callao. While most other jovenes, or youths, on his street will barely complete high school and earn low wages working in menial jobs, Eduardo will have the opportunity to double or triple his earnings and one day work as an empresa, business owner.
When I ask him why he applied for the Vittana student loan, his answers are pragmatic: to help with purchasing books, commuting to school, finishing tuition payments. But when I push a little more it’s clear that Eduardo, like all of our Vittana students, is a big dreamer. What will he use his increased earnings for? To enroll in a post-graduate program in Spain. As he says, university and education “opens doors.”
Giving a Vittana loan to a motivated, hardworking young man like Eduardo opens doors for other jovenes too. Two distant cousins with professional careers motivated Eduardo to apply to college. Now, Eduardo serves as a role model to young men and women at his church, where he spends his few spare hours of the week volunteering. Other young students of El Progreso Carabayllo see Eduardo as living proof that attending college can in fact be a reality, and maybe one day will apply for their own student loan. I like to call it the Vittana multiplier effect.
To get more information about Eduardo or help fund his loan, you can check out his Vittana profile here.
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