A decade ago, Celia Rivas was broke, homeless and nothing close to a fitness buff. Today, she owns her own gym, Extreme Fitness Team in Huntington Park, and she’s negotiating with her landlord to purchase the Pacific Boulevard building where her customers lift weights and spin.

In between those two extremes was Rivas’ first gym membership and a tiny loan from Grameen America, the domestic non-profit arm of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank. Grameen America is funded largely by private donors and targets women entrepreneurs for loans that start at only $1,500.

After her ex-husband left the country in 2005, Rivas said that she was saddled with thousands in debt and lost her home. That’s when she joined a gym for the first time – and it wasn’t to pump iron.

“I was literally sleeping at the office at that time,” she said. “I needed a place to shower, so I joined a gym.”

Rivas eventually caught the fitness bug and started training others. She dreamed of opening her own gym, but she didn’t have much cash and her damaged credit made her a bad candidate for a bank loan. She was understandably skeptical when she first heard about Grameen.

“One day, the center manager from Grameen talked to me about the loan and said there was no collateral needed,” Rivas said. “At first I was, like, ‘This is a scam, a pyramid.’ But at the same time I was, like, ‘Why not? Let’s give it a try.’”

That was two years ago. Rivas is now working on her fourth loan, which she expects will be for more than $7,000. She’s used each successively larger loan to pay rent and buy new equipment for her gym, which she said makes a profit of about $2,000 a month.

While the 15 percent interest on her Grameen loans is much higher than rates paid by more established businesses with bank loans, Rivas said it’s not overly burdensome.

Her next goal is to buy the building her gym occupies, and she’s now in negotiations with her landlord. Recent rent discussions have already shown her to be a formidable businesswoman.

“He was asking for $1,700 a month,” she said. “I got it down to $1,200. I think I’m a good negotiator.”

– Matt Pressberg