Paty is a servant leader in our small house church network. She hosts one of the churches, leads our church in the service of loving our neighbor, and has worked full-time with CUDA for the last ten years. Six years after sunsetting our microlending program, the pandemic gave us an opportunity to resurrect it, paying special attention to Arequipa’s marginalized populations—including current and former sex workers and an abused minority community. Paty and my wife Katie are discipling a friend named Catalina, who was our bridge of trust to begin serving these communities. Cata has a deep desire to share her faith and has been asking questions about reading the Bible so that she can read the Bible with these people she has been serving for most of her adult life. This last piece isn’t formally part of CUDA’s project, but I share it as an example of how kingdom ministry is holistic. We think about whole people, mind, body, and spirit, and God works through relationship networks so that people have the chance experience reconciliation in their work life, family life and relationships, in their own mental and emotional wellbeing, and finally, with the God who brings shalom.
As a reminder, Arequipa is a city of a million people, an urban center where the contrast between the richest and poorest is stark and in which the kingdom of God is breaking in and seeds of justice, wellbeing, and joy are being planted and slowly breaking through and bringing about new life. CUDA’s mission is to promote holistic wellbeing among vulnerable urban populations. CUDA networks resources and carries out programs that empower sustainable improvement in individual, family, and community quality of life. We have two main programs. 1) Through Living Libraries we train public school teachers with reading strategies to improve reading comprehension in children. 2) CUDA Microfinance gives small, no-interest loans to micro-business owners who don’t have other options for investment. They pay back the loan over 20 weeks with training sessions with Paty. We’re a small non-profit. We have a team of 4 Peruvians who work full-time with CUDA alongside my wife Katie and me, volunteers on the ground in Arequipa.
I asked Paty to share an overview of how things went for our microfinance program in 2021, along with a story of special impact. What follows are her words (my translation) about her work in 2021:
We finished 2021 with the Microfinance Program in full swing, after having restarted it in the second half of 2020. We continued without taking a break all year.
The Grace of God has acted once again through this program, in a year in which our country presents an economy that is beaten up by the health crisis and the political instability has generated for many a stage of chaos. However, He who is not governed or contained by circumstances, and in his infinite goodness gives us a grand opportunity to give hope to people. These people may have had to postpone plans in the past because of their identity, or in other cases for never having had a formal job that gives them a foot to stand on with formal financial entities.
Summary of Loans Given:
In January/February:
Vanessa for her home shop - 1000 soles. Roxana for her guinea pig farm - 1000 soles. Mariana for her restaurant - 1000 soles. Mary for her clothing shop - 1000 soles, Joanna for her hair salon - 800 soles, Angie for her hair salon - 800 soles, and Alondi for her hair salon - 800 soles.
In total, 7 loans for 6,400 soles, all of which was repaid. In addition, 8-10 hours of training for each person over the course of four and a half months, with 150-200 soles of savings accumulated by each person.
In August/September:
Roxana, to continue with her guinea pig project - 1000 soles. Joanna and Angie, 900 and 1000 soles respectively, as a second loan for their hair salons. Leidy, Hugo, Karla, and Carlos, between 700 and 800 soles each for their hair salons, and, lastly, Maryori, 500 soles for her food shop.
Eight loans in all, for 6,430 soles. We’ve completed 8 hours of training with most, and 80% of the loans have been repaid so far, with the plan to finish in January.
Story to Share:
I greatly appreciate that the program is consolidating around three fundamental aspects: the formal piece, in which we sign a contract formally and give the loan, the educational piece with the training, and the relational piece, with time to get to know each borrower, even just a little, and in so doing, show them that we are interested in the human beings who we see before us, that we appreciate them as part of God’s creation, and we don’t view them just as a number and object of our work.
Maryori (read: Marjorie) is one of the youngest who has participated in our program. She is 27 years old, had her first daughter when she was 17, and her second daughter is only about 6 months old. She has gone through stages of being rebellious, in which she did not take responsibility neither for her daughter nor for her life, until she met a new partner with whom it looked like things were going well. She became pregnant, and just a few months later he died because of COVID. Maryori felt as if the whole world was crumbling around her. She had so many plans and once again she found herself alone to raise a daughter, but the grace of God showed itself yet again this time through Mary (who has also been a participant in our program). Mary is Maryori’s mom, who has been her greatest support this whole time, praying for her and encouraging her to take up her work project again. That’s how Maryori started selling food on the weekends, and she realized that it was going well for her and she needed to invest in better kitchen implements in order to be able to make a greater number of dishes. That’s the idea she came to us with and how she got her first loan.
She is a very organized girl. Each week she plans for the food she will cook and sell on the weekend. She makes her grocery list, her list of clients, and she has improved her accounting system in order to determine her profits more exactly. I am happy to say that she has really applied herself with each of the recommended homework projects from our training sessions. Her business has involved her whole family: Mary (her mom) does the advertising and Kristel (her oldest daughter), goes out with her on the weekends to help her sell the food she’s prepared and to help take care of her little sister. This business idea has helped unify them as a family and has generated an income—perhaps not quite enough yet but a great help for them. Maryori dreams of some day having her own little restaurant or cafe and is working really hard toward this goal. She is a woman of faith and knows that she is not fighting these battles alone.
I remain expectant about how things will go next year with Maryori’s plans. I also think about Leidy’s plans, who requires an investment in her hair salon so that her spaces can be more comfortable and inviting for her clients. And for Hugo, who, in addition to his small salon in his home, wants to open a dedicated space. And for Carlos, who in addition to his salon desires to restart his Center for Occupational Education which had been suspended because of the pandemic but which is another of his passions, teaching young people with low resources to train them with their art so that they have a tool with which to work. I remain expectant about the plans for all of our future borrowers that we may reach.