Small Loans, Big Rewards An Unusual Program That Gives Small Loans To Women In The Dominican Republic Is Helping Them Find Success

Last February, deep within the labyrinth of squatters settlements on the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, I met Alejandrina Acosta, a mother of seven.

“Look what I can do,” she said proudly as she lifted up a handful of chicken feet which she sells with vegetables for soup. Since receiving a “micro-loan,” Acosta has purchased 100-pound bags of poultry scraps wholesale. She rises at 5 a.m. to divide these into affordable 1 pound-plastic bags. This once impoverished woman employs three men who bicycle the streets selling her product.

“I am a smart woman,” she said, “But I never had a chance before.”

Acosta is one of the 1,400 women entrepreneurs who has launched or expanded a business in the Dominican Republic after receiving a small business loan, usually under $100. The money comes from Women’s Opportunity Fund, a Chicago-based Christian organization which assists the most destitute women in developing countries. As part of an “Insight” trip with 12 other Americans, I recently saw firsthand the transforming hope these micro-loans provide in women’s lives.

I first learned of Women’s Opportunity Fund through a chance cup of coffee at Fitzbillie’s last fall. Julie Hindmarsh, a public health nurse on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, was visiting First Presbyterian Church in Spokane as a volunteer board member of Women’s Opportunity Fund. She joined our table in the crowded restaurant. She had returned recently from Russia and Guatemala and, with engaging enthusiasm, she told stories of how individual women, their families, and communities were changing with just a little assistance from this grass-roots organization.

Begun just five years ago by 12 American women, the group now works with indigenous leadership in 16 countries. They utilized the established concept of Trust Banks, where a group of 18 to 25 poor women unite together and pledge to guarantee each other’s loans, but they augmented this with a holistic emphasis on business training, leadership development and spiritual support. Women have responded with a stellar 98 percent payback record.

Word of this vision spread rapidly, and individuals, church groups, and civic organizations are all responding.

“Linda, come see for yourself,” Hindmarsh said after hearing my questions.

As a college professor, I had traveled to Guatemala and Mexico and gained a glimpse of the crushing urban and rural poverty women face - a destitution which grinds hope away. I still remember haunting faces of hopelessness. The global focus in the media added to these images. Whether reading about abandoned orphans in Romania, hearing about the sexual exploitation of young Thailand girls, or seeing television images of refugees fleeing with malnourished children, I could not imagine the desperation and aloneness some women must feel. But I had also been impressed with the immense dignity of women caring for large families ravaged by hunger, health problems, violence and a sense of worthlessness. I often longed for a direct way to contribute. Yet I never knew quite how.

So that’s how I ended up in a squatters settlement on the outskirts of Santo Domingo talking to Alejandrina Acosta. When Acosta talked about her successful chicken soup business, her pride showed itself everywhere, from the wild bougainvillea she arranged in a vase on her new dining room table, to the way she talked about herself, her family and her Trust Bank community. As I listened to Acosta’s story, I sensed how much the loan symbolized. Trust Bank members had selected her as their trusted treasurer, an honor and responsibility she bears with joy. “We help each other succeed,” she explained to us as we gathered in her corrugated-tin home. “When our business is failing, we help figure out new ideas for a woman.”

Each Trust Bank is assigned a project director from Aspire, the indigenous Dominican Republic organization linked with the Women’s Opportunity Fund.

Niobe Maloney, an energetic Oprah look-alike, helps train local staff and works directly with several loan banks herself. Having grown up in extreme poverty, she fought to gain an education. As our guide, she helped us navigate the dirt alleyways to find loan recipients scattered throughout the squatters settlements. Most conducted their businesses right outside their front doors. Cooks lured customers with the aromas of homemade Johnny cakes, a popular meat pastelita, fried pork rinds and popcorn. Loans purchased the pan, wholesale ingredients and containers.

Other women used loans to offer basic services: books to start a lending library; hair dryers to open a beauty shop; used jeans and T-shirts for a clothing store; sticks for long mops. Women spoke of their dreams: medicine for sick children; school supplies and shoes so their children can attend school; moving an elderly mother into a safer section; professional futures for their children. Universal concerns.

As I listened to their dreams, I thought about the resourceful grandmother who raised America’s renowned poet Maya Angelou. As an unemployed black woman in the segregated South, Angelou’s grandmother lugged a makeshift stove miles each morning to a coal mine where she also cooked delicious meat pastelitas for hungry miners. With creative persistence, her informal business supported her family.

This eventually evolved into the colorful Arkansas general store which Angelou recreated in her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” As I met the children and grandchildren of the Trust Bank women, I wondered what talents might emerge because of their mothers’ new chances to dream.

“Loans work best,” Maloney said, “A gift is not a gift. It only paralyzes the heart of the poor. Women seldom know how far they can go. We grow leaders, letting women work together to succeed.”

Just as American women raise funds by telling the story one by one, the opportunity to join a Trust Bank also spreads woman to woman. One afternoon at a dusty street market we met Mireya Morena, a Dominican networker so appreciated by others.

Wearing a cotton shirtdress, with her gray hair pulled neatly back, she was selling her spices along a busy thoroughfare. Scrawny scavenger dogs sniffed though mounds of foul garbage. Exhaust fumes and jarring noises from the old cars, buses, and motorcycles lingered in the air. Two drunk teenagers harangued customers. Unfazed, Morena continued conversing with neighboring vendors, her contagious smile and laughter giving street joy to a grim place. When asked whether her vision for helping so many others came from her family, she told us no.

“My family only looked out for themselves,” she said. “But one day, in a Gospel Christian church, the pastor told us that God says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. So each morning, I look for the good in people and see who I can help this day.”

Into her fourth loan now, she teaches other women how to build businesses. But she gives far more, drawing isolated women together, and leaving an economic and spiritual legacy.

For an organization which began because American women wanted a way to live out Jesus’s vision to serve the poor, Morena provides a link in reaching Dominican women that completes an international circle. This merging of visions also is occurring in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

One woman to another. An American gives a gift; another woman and family gets a genuine opportunity. Independence, not dependence. Community. Leadership development. Spiritual visions merging. The women of the Dominican Republic gave me a gift, too, a story of hope to be told.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Linda Lawrence Hunt is an English professor at Whitworth College. For more information about the Women’s Opportunity Fund, or if you would like Hunt to speak to your organization, call 466-1000, ext. 4206 or e-mail lhunt@whitworth.edu. Or call WOF at (800) 793-9455.