EDAPROSPO Guadalupe Rodriquez Torres

Guadalupe “Lupita” Rodriguez Torres is an entrepreneur without equal. Inspired by the verse that exhorts Christians to work ‘while it is still yet light’, Lupita does just that. Her first business venture was selling breakfast to workers at three nearby leather factories. She has since expanded that line of food sales to include lunches as well. At 9 or 9.30am every morning she makes her rounds with breakfasts. In addition to her breakfasts and lunches, Lupita also makes pastries, juices, extracts, jellos, and flan. She recently bought a large fridge to store her burgeoning food venture.

On top of her daily food sales, Lupita also works with leather that she can buy cheaply from the factories nearby. She has her own leather-working machine and makes leather purses, bags, jackets, pillows, mini-skirts, coinbags, etc. When she tires of leather, she also sews a variety of fabrics. In the picture she is showing a throw rug she recently sewed; she makes a wide variety of clothing products as well.

Not content with three types of food sales, leatherworking, and sewing, Lupita also sells products from catalogues. Every month she gets several catalogues from Avon, eSika, etc. She then goes around her neighborhood and sells the makeup, clothes, and household items to her neighbors and receives a 25% commission from the manufacturers. Lupita also utilizes this network of clients to sell her own products as well. Always active and always social, Lupita has formed two lending groups at EDAPROSPO and acts as treasurer in at least one of them (see Trust as a Foundation for more on EDAPROSPO lending groups). While I was interviewing her, she was busily recruiting two more women into a third lending group.

Still not content with three types of food sales, leatherworking, sewing, catalogue-selling, and lending team former, Lupita has recently bought a washing machine and plans to open a laundry service very soon. In addition, she rents out four rooms on the second floor of her house. With her most recent loan, Lupita bought materials for and built an area outside of her house to open a small restaurant and bodega. She plans on using the profits to build a third story to her house so that she can rent out more rooms. An incredibly vivacious and amiable host, Lupita told me, after giving me a handmade leather coinbag and homemade jello, that her motto is to work hard and fight hard while living then one day God will take her and she can rest. Thank you for being a part of Lupita’s frenetic entrepreneurial activity. I can assure you your money has never had a more productive than Lupita’s several month use of it.

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Nonprofits & Activism

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