Aurora’s Tenacity

Aurora had never dreamed of owning a business. Before the stroke, she worked as an elementary school teacher and had never thought of doing anything else. Unfortunately, the stroke rendered her unable to walk and to travel to her job. It was the necessity that forced her to find another way to feed her family.

“’ The hands work!’ I would say, and the head too, so I said to myself, ‘Lord, if you have left my hands and eyes functional, I can work,’ and that’s how I got the idea about the business.”

Aurora knits and sells a variety of crafts, including dresses, hats, baby shoes, and rugs. She also runs a corner store and grows chickens with the help of her granddaughters. She has sold her crafts to customers in the cities of Tegucigalpa and Comayagua, and with the help of friends from church, has exported crafts to Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Before the stroke, Aurora earned a small, but livable wage working as a teacher. Although it wasn’t always easy, life was starting to pick up. She had taken out a loan and bought land and building materials to make a new house for her family. Her partner, however, had different plans.

He secretly sold the property and building materials and packed his belongings, beat their kids, and left with the money. When Aurora found out about what her partner had done, she was stunned. She suffered the stroke shortly after, blaming this incident as the sole reason for her affliction.

Rural Honduras is not a disabled-friendly place, and Aurora lacked the means to transport herself to her job. The government did not transfer her to any other location, so she had to stop working.

“I stopped being a teacher because the supervisor at that time passed away and no one in the administration supported me,” she explains.

As an attempt to find a treatment for her condition, and she sold all of her possessions, including her bed and furniture. Unfortunately, no remedy was found and was hopelessly left with no material possessions and children to feed. The silver lining was, however, that her children remained by her side and her partner was out of her life.

“I told the kids, ‘now that he is gone we can pick ourselves up…’”

She started her first business selling food from home, including baleadas, tamales, and fried chicken. At the time, an Adelante credit officer invited her to join a group, and the rest is history.

“Adelante helped us a lot because, in the state of disability that I am at, not any bank will support me. Adelante has been a lot of help,” she says.

“We can always count on the help of Adelante. I tell all women who are disabled, whose eyes, hands, and brains work, that they can still keep going forward.”

She currently holds a loan of $1,000, which she used to buy supplies and products for the store. Although Aurora does not think of herself as ambitious, she hopes that her business will continue to grow to satisfy more customers.

For her family, she wants nothing but the best.

“All I want is for my granddaughters to overcome,” she says in tears, “I want the best for them.’’

Hear Aurora talk about her journey: