Nicaragua Teaches a Lesson in the Power of Micro Loans
Matthew Glynn of The Independent travels to Nicaragua to meet FINCA founder Rupert Scofield and discovers how FINCA’s financial services helps to change the lives of low-income entrepreneurs.
Among the FINCA clients he meets is Dona Julia Lilliam Ramirez, who runs a grocery store.
“A client of FINCA for 19 years, she used her first loan to buy cleaning products in Managua to sell in the nearby villages,” Glynn writes. “She now uses the proceeds of her business to feed poor children in the neighborhood. ‘Gracias a dios, gracias a dios primero, y Rupert segundo,’ she says during our meeting. ‘Thanks be to God, thanks be to God first and Rupert second.'”
Glynn meets 15 other FINCA clients with similar stories, including a mother and daughter who sells tortillas and a man who employs four people to run a plant nursery.
“Without banks like FINCA,” Glynn concludes, “they wouldn’t have stood a chance.”