LENDING OPTIMISM

In 2002, when Colleen Roe first visited Dilla, Ethiopia, with her husband, she felt overwhelmed. The cockroaches, odors and abject poverty were too much for her. She considered booking an immediate return flight to Spokane. And then she met the people.

People like Wengalalite Alemu, an 18-year-old married woman and mother of four. And Aleminesh Gedo, who had a husband, 10 children and almost no income.

After talking with Alemu, Gedo and others, Roe could find little to complain about, even with her substandard hotel accommodations. She realized – to her surprise – that she had a common bond with these women.

Roe and her husband, Bill Roe, a local bank vice president, volunteer for the Spokane-based International Assistance Program. The nonprofit program links Christian business and professional people with projects in what it calls “under-resourced” nations.

The IAP, housed at Northview Bible Church in Spokane Valley, was founded in 1992 to help provide financial support for churches in Romania. In 2001, it launched the micro-loan project in Ethiopia.

The goal is simple: creating humanitarian opportunities in poverty-ridden villages by offering small loans ($100 to $200) almost exclusively to women. The results, according to the organization’s Web site ( www.iassist.org), are individual self-esteem and self-reliance, as well as increased stability among families, churches and communities.

“Colleen and I originally got involved,” Bill Roe remembers, “because we both had an interest in global issues but didn’t know how a banker could fit into all that. I saw medical and construction people in missions – but not bankers.

“But about five years ago I heard about IAP and knew this was where I could get involved.”

The same could be said of Maurice and Sandi Gress, owners of AU Dental Ceramics in Spokane.

“We needed a project we could put our arms around,” Sandi recalls. When they traveled with the Roes to Ethiopia, they knew they’d found it.

It’s a project that puts its arms around them in return. On her first trip, Colleen Roe recalls, “The women in the micro-loan project hosted a reception for us at the church compound. They were standing in a semicircle with the church elders behind them. They were clapping their hands, and two children approached us with flowers.

“We greeted each woman individually. They each took my head in their hands and kissed me all over my face.”

On another occasion, says Carolyn Holmes, another Spokane resident who travels with IAP to Ethiopia, “A woman took off her beautiful shawl and wrapped it around Colleen’s shoulders. Then she removed it from Colleen and wrapped it around me. We had no translator at that time, but we guessed this symbolized our sense of unity. We are all sisters.”

Says Sandi Gress: “It’s actually a familiar situation for us: women taking care of their families.”

Such a bond between comfortable Northwesterners and poverty-stricken Africans is based on similar goals: building businesses, earning income and caring for loved ones. And that’s what sets IAP apart from some other mission organizations, says Keith Davis, executive director.

He explains that addressing economic needs first can lead to further ministries later. Once these families climb out of poverty, he says, they are able to contribute to the community and to the work of the local church, which helps to train more pastors and grow more churches.

But poverty is always the biggest hurdle.

“The per capita income in southeastern Ethiopia, where the IAP is focusing its resources, is the equivalent of only $160 a year,” Davis says. That’s not enough to provide clothing, medicine, or schooling for their children. It’s hardly enough to buy food for a hungry family.

Yet IAP, funded by private donations, is making an impact. Thanks to a micro-loan, Aleminesh Gedo – the mother of 10 – has expanded her barley transport business.

“She will purchase raw barley grain from the farmers, then transport it in bags – some by foot, some by public transportation,” Bill Roe says. “She takes it to a mill, where it’s ground into flour. Then she transports that flour in sacks to one of the local markets.

“She does this several times a week and earns a profit of about $2.50 a week. It’s been wonderful for her family to make that kind of money.”

While it doesn’t sound like much to Americans, $2.50 a week almost doubles the Gedo family’s annual income.

Likewise, young Wengalalite Alemu and her household have seen an improved lifestyle since receiving a micro-loan in 2001. When the Gresses and the Roes first met her in 2002, she was only 18 years old, and her oldest child was already 6.

With her IAP loan, she began purchasing raw coffee from nearby farmers and carrying it on her back to a processing station. A year later, she used the profits to buy a mule to help haul the coffee. Her business flourished, and she has been able to pay back the IAP loan in full.

What’s more, all four of her children, even the daughters – in a country where girls do not usually attend school – are getting a formal education. They see their mother’s success and realize there is a way out of poverty. And they’re encouraged to work hard in school, because Alemu sets an example by taking English classes in her free time.

Success stories like these are common among micro-loan recipients. One reason is the accountability requirement. The 100 or so Dilla women who have participated in the program had to submit business plans before receiving the loans.

Even after the loans are granted, the women are still accountable to the IAP. They’re required to meet biweekly in small groups with a micro-loan officer to discuss their businesses.

Bill Roe says these meetings are vital to the women’s success. “They talk through problems and issues,” he says. “They are starting to think more and more in business terms.”

In true support-group fashion, they help one another on various levels. For example, Roe says, “One woman will tell another about the best price for grain or coffee in a certain nearby village.

“And there’s a strong spiritual component as well,” he says. “They pray for one another.”

Sandi Gress says the program also improves relationships between the loan recipients and their husbands.

“At first,” she says, “the women seemed to be regarded like slaves or donkeys. But, on our second trip, I saw the pride of the husbands as the women were telling their stories. The men could see the difference in their own wives.”

Adds Holmes: “There was one woman who told us that she never would have imagined she could be a businesswoman, helping her husband provide for their family. We noticed the tremendous sense of dignity in being a partner in her family, when traditionally she would not be able to earn an income.”

Just as those family relationships are strengthened, so are the ties between Americans and Africans.

Colleen Roe, whose initial impression of Ethiopia was so negative, has a new outlook. She looks forward to going for an extended visit each November, and her greatest joy is meeting the people there.

“It’s about creating relationships, being with them and hearing their stories,” she says.

Now she sees beyond the cockroaches and poverty. She looks at the faces of women who’ve received IAP assistance, and she sees sisters.