María Luisa Benitez

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to María Luisa Benitez by Fundación Paraguaya in Paraguay. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 11 months, Fundación Paraguaya will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear Kiva Lender,

My name is Nick Cain and I am writing to you from Asunción, Paraguay, where I have been volunteering as a Kiva Fellow for the past four months. At some point since becoming a Kiva lender, you made a loan to a Paraguayan entrepreneur. By doing so, you joined a group of people who have collectively invested over $2.3 million in this country (a figure that astounds me each and every time I write it), and for that, I would like to start by saying thank you. Because of you, bricks are made, dresses are sewn, cell phones are sold, and mounds and mounds of Paraguay’s most popular snack, chipa, are cooked and eaten. Your money moves this economy.

The Field Partner: Fundación Paraguaya

As you may know, all Kiva loans are disbursed and administered by Field Partners—local institutions who vet clients and collect payments. In Paraguay, your capital flows through Fundación Paraguaya, a 24-year-old organization with a remarkable history and a bold social mission. Led by its founder, Martín Burt, Fundación Paraguaya brought microfinance to Paraguay in 1985, at a time when the country was still controlled by Alfredo Stroessner, an iron-fisted, secret police-wielding dictator whose maniacal 35-year rule left his country poor, uneducated, and disastrously bereft of infrastructure. But, with a touch of irony that is familiar to many microfinance practitioners, the same set of circumstances that left so many Paraguayans entrenched in poverty also created an informal economy that was teeming with micro-entrepreneurs and, Martín believed, hungry for credit. A chance meeting with a representative from microfinance pioneer ACCION International inspired Martín to act on his hunch that, for Paraguayans trying to lift themselves out of poverty, access to capital would be the key.

The Leader

After 24 years, three major international awards, and one term as mayor of Asunción, Martín Burt is still at the helm of Fundación Paraguaya, preaching the doctrine of sustainability and innovation to his team (now over 150 people strong) of managers, teachers, and loan officers. Since 1985, Fundación Paraguaya has disbursed over $37.5 million in loans to entrepreneurs across the country. Because it is a non-profit organization, when Fundación Paraguaya earns money on its loan portfolio, the money is re-invested into the operating budgets of its other innovative social ventures: a business education program for young people, two self-sufficient agricultural high schools, and a recently-announced Poverty Eradication Project that is every bit as ambitious as it sounds.

Recently, I sat down with Martín to hear a little more about how Fundación Paraguaya got started, where he sees it going, and how the interest-free capital provided by lenders like you helps more than just a single borrower. Check out the interview in the video below.

On the Ground

I have met over one hundred beneficiaries of your investments since my arrival in Paraguay. After days spent visiting Kiva borrowers, with my bus idling in Asuncion’s rush hour traffic and my lungs swimming in diesel exhaust, I spent a lot of time reflecting on Paraguay’s micro-entrepreneurs. My thoughts tended to bounce from borrower to borrower, from business to business: the garrulous restaurateur, the sun-soaked brick-maker, the struggling seamstress—different lives facing unique challenges. But their differences weren’t what stood out. Instead, I found myself focusing on a uniting theme: “asi, no más” a ubiquitous Paraguayan phrase that roughly translates to “That’s just how it is.”

The phrase, an attitude for some, practically a modus operandi for others, evokes a number of currents running through Paraguayan life. Most dominant is an incredible, nearly universal tranquility in the way Paraguayans confront life and its challenges. For many of the Kiva borrowers I met (such as Miguel Arce, Alejandra Alvarez , and Facunda Perez), behind that tranquility were razor sharp ambition and entrepreneurial acumen that helped their businesses grow and flourish. For others, “asi, no más” translated into a more passive willingness to accept the status quo.

The attitude itself wasn’t what struck me—with a history of political tyranny and an absolutely oppressive spring/summer climate, it is not surprising to find a culture that likes to keep an even keel and is disinclined to rock the boat. What was striking was how often my amateur analyses of Paraguay’s fight against poverty could be boiled down to this simple phrase. For families who were truly struggling, it felt like it was the driving force behind their ability to make do, to exist with dignity. For those who were staying afloat and growing when possible, “asi, no más” was an ability to withstand setbacks, to remain confident that, since that’s just how it is, eventually things would get better and hard work would be rewarded.

For all of these families, whether they were at the very bottom of the income ladder or perched somewhere closer to the middle, the capital provided by Fundación Paraguaya was seen as a much needed tool for economic stability and growth. To read more about how microfinance fits into the development puzzle in Paraguay, check out The Feel-Good Line, an entry I wrote for the Kiva Fellows blog.

Stay Connected!

Click hereto see more fundraising loans from Fundación Paraguaya.

To stay connected to Paraguay and to all the great work being done at Fundación Paraguaya, join our lending team Team Fundación Paraguaya. (New to Kiva Lending Teams? Learn more here)

Thank you again for investing in Paraguay and being a part of Kiva!

Sincerely,

Nick Cain

Kiva Fellow

Questions? Comments? Feel free to write me at nick.cain@fellows.kiva.org

P.S. I would like to say a special thank you to the 19 Kiva Lenders who are currently members of Team Fundacion Paraguaya. Your support has been so impressive! Together we have almost 200 loans to our name!