I am the first born in a family of 3 children and I grew up in the slums of Nairobi whereby life was hard because my parents were unemployed. My father passed on when I had joined secondary school and so I had to drop out of school and support my mother to take care of my siblings. I secured a casual job where I worked hard and used my salary to support my mother and partly put aside to enable me resume secondary school.

My employer allowed me to join school and work after school and over the weekend. I struggled with various challenges and finally completed and continued work and started saving so that I could establish a business which will enable me to earn more money and provide quality life to my mother who is sick because of old age.

I started shoes repair business as I had the passion and their was need in the community because no one offered the services. My business has been in existence for over 4 years and it involves repair and offering polishing services to the local residents. I have completed training in leather work and now want to start producing shoes as well as repairing which will enable me to increase my profit which I intend to use to offer good medical care for my mother as well as start my own family and in the long run expand my business into big shoe production.

I am grateful to all the lenders who supported my first loan because I was in position to acquire basic leather machine which has really assisted me to utilize my skills to produce new shoes. This new venture has contributed toward my monthly profit to increase by 65% and also the number of customers has increased and now I am also receiving orders from local shoes stores but am not in position to meet all the orders which has made me to disappoint my customers on some occasions.

To ensure my customers are happy with my services which will contribute to higher profits, I intend to expand my business by buying 2 modern commercial leather machines each at $ 125 thus for the 2 machines will cost total $ 250. I intend to use part of my savings and loan from Zidisha. After I have bought the 2 machines then I will hire 2 local people who I have trained and mentored for the last one years. The new team and me will work tirelessly to ensure our customers demand is meet thus increase in monthly profit.

I will use part of the profit to provide good medical care for my mother as well as expanding my business to accommodate training opportunities for the local people.

Thanks in advance for supporting my loan and I will continue with updating all of you on the progress as well as sending in my weekly installment on time.