Our Why

THE TIN SHACK is at the end of a row of shacks located under the shadow of a large bridge, next to a large river and beside a seething garbage dump.  The river floods a couple times a year, swamping the ground floor under two feet of water.  Here, in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, I met Altagracia, who runs a beauty salon from this tin shack, which is also her home.  She is a single mom with three young-adult children. 

She took advantage of the 12-hour training course that taught financial literacy and basic business skills and then qualified for a microloan to purchase a hair dryer and some salon inventory.  She paid that loan off and took out a second loan to grow the business, setting aside part of the funds to set one of her sons up as a barber in a separate location. The other son is a millwright, and her daughter is in high school.

Altagracia’s son told me that she is the glue that holds the family together in a very rough neighborhood and that her entrepreneurial drive is an inspiration to all her kids.  I was inspired by her quiet confidence, resilience and dignity, as she found a path forward to provide for herself and for her family through a sustainable livelihood.

THE ROAD to the small Honduran village is surrounded by breathtaking views of small mountains, sweeping valleys and a fast-moving river. Stopping in town, we walked along the only road past a small convenience store, turned into a side alley, down some old concrete stairs, through a small door into a dark workshop. Here I met Joaquin, a shoemaker.

Joaquin learned the trade from a relative and started as a one-person operation.  After a number of loan cycles, and carefully growing his business, today he employs 11 of his neighbours to make good quality leather shoes and boots. His employees have access to microloans that they use for home improvement, including concrete floors, roofs, and sanitation, and they make their loan payments through payroll deduction.

With his business acumen and hard work, Joaquin has been able to leverage the microloans and available training to grow into a vital small-to-medium sized enterprise that is providing sustainable livelihoods for 12 families in his village.  Not everyone is an entrepreneur, but everyone could use a job.

THE MARKET in the Haitian countryside was like nothing I’d experienced. Located on an open field, it pulsated with the energy of thousands of people packed into a chaos of ad hoc booths – tarps on the packed dirt ground and blankets hung overhead to provide shade from the blistering sun. Vendors sold anything – small piles of grain, jars of oil, a scattering of plantains and avocadoes, candies from an open bag, traditional drinks, watches, pots and used clothes.

There I met Estimené, a member of the Pathway to a Better Life program in Haiti. She sells wheat, rice and oil in the market, measuring out by the cup into containers brought by her clients. It’s a hardscrabble way to earn a living. My colleague told me that by global standards this was not even a working poor market but rather a market at the bottom of the economic ladder.  And yet, for Estimené, it was a livelihood, a means to provide for her family.

Only 7 months earlier, Estimené was one of the poorest women in her community with no prospects and no voice. Her family was malnourished, and she lived by what she could beg for or earn through occasional day labour.  She was invited to join the 18-month program that provided weekly mentoring on life skills, such as nutrition, hygiene and personal finance.  She was provided with start-up assets and is learning how to run her own microenterprise, with the market stall being but one of the potential sources of income. She is managing to provide for her family, grow her business and put away some savings. 

Her transformation is not merely economic – she has a voice in her community, the confidence to hold her own at the market, and the tools to move her family forward with housing, health and education.  I could see in her eyes that she was brimming with new hope and confidence.

This is why we do what we do.