It’s a sizzling afternoon in Comayagua, Honduras, a small city about 40 miles from the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa. Dust from the winding dirt road kicks up, then settles again with every footstep. Nestled into the side of a hill alongside a dirt road is a simple building whose unmarked exterior belies the bustling bakery inside, famed for having the best bread in town.

The proud owner of the business, “Panadería Cesia,” is Rosa Lidia Bustillo, a 45-year-old, hardworking mother of three who greets visitors and customers with a warm smile and trays piled high with warm bread. Rosa Lidia started the bakery five years ago with a microloan of 20,000 lempiras, or roughly US$1,300 from long-time ACCION partner microfinance institution Bancovelo.

With just a little over a thousand dollars, the family was able to launch this enterprise of their own making. Rosa Lidia’s husband, Marco Antonio, had learned the business of baking as a boy. However, he was toiling as a day laborer for meager wages prior to “Panadería Cesia” and unable to get his family ahead.

Without the hand-up of a microloan from Bancovelo, Rosa Lidia and Marco Antonio would never have had the resources to turn this dream into a reality. “We started it all with Orlando,” says Rosa motioning to her Bancovelo loan officer.

A second important step in building the business came when Rosa Lidia secured a second loan ­ - this time a housing loan of 25,000 lempiras (roughly US$1,500) ­ from Bancovelo to construct a full kitchen capable of handling a higher volume of baking.

A few years later, “Panadería Cesia” is a lively place, with six employees and the constant hum and glow of a fire. The bakery’s namesake, Cesia, six-year-old daughter of Rosa Lidia and Marco Antonio, darts in and out of the bustling, sweet-smelling kitchen.

Rosa Lidia and Marco Antonio are themselves glowing, and not from the heat of the ovens. They are proud of what they’ve accomplished in five, short years: They own their own enterprise, their bread is known as the best around and, most importantly, they have steadily increased their modest income.

This story about Rosa Lidia Bustillo, who lives in Comayagua, Honduras and is a client of ACCION partner Bancovelo, is told on the ACCION website. ACCION International was founded in 1961 to address the desperate poverty in Latin America's cities. Begun as a student-run volunteer effort in the shantytowns of Caracas, Venezuela, ACCION today is one of the world's premier microfinance organizations, with a network of lending partners that spans Latin America, Africa, Asia and the United States and a tradition of developing innovative solutions to poverty. The picture of Rosa and her family comes from the ACCION website.