Photo: Barb with Sister Emile, Coordinator and friend.

Barb's Story

 I had learned of micro finance in my role as economic development director for the Cuyuna Iron Range in central Minnesota. When I learned a local medical team was going to Haiti I asked to join them, though not yet knowing what I could contribute. We went to Pignon, Haiti, located on the Central Plateau. After visiting clinics, schools, and churches, and talking to just about everybody I met, I found my purpose in coming to Haiti. It would be providing small loans for the poorest rural people, primarily women. The program I was able to develop is based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of economist Muhhammad Yunus, in Bangladesh, a model being used successfully throughout the world. My first Haitian loan club was a ready-made group of ten very poor women, who brought their severely malnourished babies to the hospital in Pignon. There, the doctors would see that the babies were fed and provided with vitamins and fruit. When they had recovered their fragile health, they left the hospital, only to return a month later with the same problems. This first group was called Mothers Club by the hospital staff, and I later named my program in their honor. So Mothers Clubs began before I had even solicited any funds to finance the loans. I had the name and structure of the loan program but only had enough money with me to fund the ten loans. My original thought had been to go home and raise funds, but these women could not wait for me to return, so I handed each of them their very first $40 USD Mothers Clubs loan. I went home nearly penniless. (Now loans have increased to $100 USD as inflation has eaten away at business profits). The ten women who received those loans never had to bring their children back to the hospital for malnutrition again! I learned a lesson that stays with me today --- the only thing these poorest of the poor women need is an opportunity. Their hard work, along with the opportunities you make possible in the form of small business loans that re-new when repaid, changes their lives and provides hope for a better future.