Ulloa 1 Group

Dear Esperanza lenders,

As you may know, all entrepreneur profiles on Kiva’s website are posted by local Field Partners like Esperanza, whose mission is to “free children and their families from poverty through initiatives that generate income, education, and health, restoring self-worth and dignity to those who have lost hope.” As a Kiva Fellow working with Esperanza International in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I saw Esperanza’s mission at work most recently while visiting a batey.

For those that are not familiar with the term “batey,” it is a small, barrack-style community built and maintained by large sugar corporations. These communities are often completely surrounded by sugar cane fields, and often they lack basic resources such as clean drinking water, transportation, reliable electricity, and medicine. The majority of a batey’s members work in planting, cutting, and loading sugar cane for eight months of the year. The other four months are a stalemate, during which there are no sugar cane earnings.

In order to ensure continued earnings, one entrepreneur, Cloreta Yan, who lives on a rural batey, used her Kiva loan to open a small store in her house. Her community previously did not have a store where they might buy basic supplies, which meant that community members had to travel to nearby communities to shop. When my fellow Kiva Fellow Kalie Gold and I first visited Cloreta, she offered very basic supplies, such as sugar, oil, and rice. When I conducted a follow-up visit, she was selling over 20 items, including tobacco, ice, drinks, and cookies. She is now earning 600 pesos a week and, according to her loan officer, continues to expand the line of merchandise she sells.

Esperanza has supported 4,251 Kiva entrepreneurs thus far, resulting in approximately $200,000 loaned. Continually working to improve their organization, they have recently opened an office in Trau de Nord, Haiti. Esperanza continues to grow - thanks to Kiva lenders like you!

Staff members at various offices throughout the Dominican Republic visit their entrepreneurs frequently, and many of you will receive an update on an entrepreneur who received a loan contribution from you. Unfortunately, due to logistical and administrative constraints, reaching every entrepreneur for an update is just not possible, even with Esperanza’s dedicated team. Whether or not an update is provided on a specific entrepreneur to whom you made a loan, I hope that you have enjoyed this update on the impact that Esperanza has had with Kiva funds.

Finally, I would like to thank you personally for supporting an entrepreneur in Haiti or the Dominican Republic. It saddens me to realize that this letter marks the end of my time working with Kiva’s Field Partner Esperanza here in the Dominican Republic. For the last three months I have had the pleasure of working with Esperanza, visiting numerous Kiva entrepreneurs, and training staff members in writing business profile updates for Kiva lenders such as yourself.

To see all current fundraising loans from Esperanza on Kiva.org, please click here:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=44&status=Fundraising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_te=mj&_te=mj

To see a short YouTube video on Cloreta Yan, please click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8reiqg1pbBo&_te=mj

On behalf of Kiva, Esperanza, and its entrepreneurs, we thank you for your continued support.

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Ulloa 1 Group, consisting of Tomasina Zamora, Genel Jean Baptiste, Andres Chago cole, Madeleine Laurent, Felipe Nasis Habaan by Esperanza International, a partner of HOPE International in Dominican Republic. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 4 months of this loan, Esperanza International, a partner of HOPE International will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

I recently had the chance to visit the Ulloa community as they finished up their final repayment. After the repayment, the group decided to take out an even bigger loan with Esperanza International!

I also had the chance to hear Tomasina speak about her recent successes with her colmado. She will now be taking out her ninth loan with Esperanza, and the benefits from her business have been impressive. Tomasina lives in a wooden home, but the heat and humidity of the Dominican Republic had started to take its toll, rotting away some of her home. With the money from her business, she has begun constructing a new cement foundation and walls for her home. This will provide better security and will last much longer than the typical wooden home.

Tomasina would not have been able to do this without the access to capital from Esperanza. Before Esperanza came to Ulloa, Tomasina had no access to loans or savings. Now, her colmado is thriving, and she is finally able to build a home of which she can be proud. Thank you again for your loan to Tomasina and the Ulloa 1 group, and check back in with Kiva soon to lend to the group again!

Dear Kiva Lenders,

While it has been two weeks since a 7.1 earthquake struck Port au Prince, Haiti the destruction and loss of lives left as a result of the natural disaster is tremendous.

Kiva’s field partner in Haiti, Esperanza International, has offices located in the northern part of Haiti, Trou du Nord (close to Cap Haitian), in which it is confirmed that the offices as well as all staff members were spared from harm. However, Esperanza has confirmed that two associates who were in the capital tragically lost their lives during the earthquake. In addition, 40% of Esperanza’s borrowers in the Dominican Republic are of Haitian origin and have been adversely impacted by the disaster. This link is particularly important as many of the Haitian clients in the Dominican Republic regularly send remittances to their relatives in Haiti, which will prove to be a vital lifeline to help sustain these families in the months ahead.

Clients in Haiti now more than ever face a whole new set of challenges: many associates have already and will continue to take in family members fleeing from Port-au-Prince; hundreds of borrowers cope with the emotional distress of losing family and friends; associates who once traveled frequently to the capital as a commercial center must find news ways of obtaining necessary supplies and materials for their businesses; and many will be facing elevated prices as the supply of products is now limited and the demand is elevated, etc.

Esperanza has responded to the disaster situation at hand by working with already established partners in Port-au-Prince and southern Haiti in addition to various U.S. and Dominican organizations. It is currently in the early stages of an immediate disaster relief plan, which is targeting 10,000 families to send immediate relief to. In addition, Esperanza has collaborated with the U.S. organization, Operation Rainbow, performing around 100 surgeries to date in the border town of Jimaní as well as with surgeons from Rush Presbyterian Hospital of Chicago to treat victims in Carrefour, the epicenter of the earthquake. This immediate aid will be followed by a longer-term relief process, which will focus on 5,000 families (32, 250 individuals) to provide rehabilitation to in the form of family housing, education, water/preventative health, and income generation.

With regards to the earthquake’s effects on Esperanza’s microfinance operations, it is likely that in the months ahead many of Esperanza’s loans in Haiti may need to be refinanced or cancelled as clients deal with the aforementioned challenges, however, we intend to stand by our clients and continue to offer access to credit, as well as our range of complimentary services, as the situation permits. Additionally, Esperanza intends to go ahead with its long term plan of opening three more branch offices in the next three years in Haiti to expand access to credit to Haitian borrowers.

Despite the many obstacles borrowers face in the months ahead, associates have continually proven capable of overcoming adversity and showing resiliency in difficult times. They have found innovative and creative ways to create new income streams and this ability will be essential to a sustainable rebuilding process in Haiti. More than ever, micro-finance has the potential to be a vital part of this re-growth. We encourage you now, more than ever, to finance Haitian borrowers through Kiva microloans.

If you would like to learn more about Esperanza and HOPE International, or to find out ways you can help, – including their current humanitarian relief and other support efforts in Haiti – please visit Hope’s website. You can also visit Esperanza’s website or email disasterresponse@esperanza.org.

Photos: Mike Lee, Operation Rainbow