An Update on the Colombia Project
Helene Dudley
Colombia 1963-65After a recent visit to Colombia to meet with our Santa Marta partner and visit loan recipients, we want to give you an update about progress to date and exciting plans to add a third partnership in Cartagena.
The Colombia Project is now six years old, and we have achieved success far beyond our initial expectations. We have given out more than US$30,000 in micro-credit loans to displaced families in Popayan and Santa Marta.
Our initial focus on helping displaced families has proven to be one of great need as Colombia ranks 4th in the world in terms of internal refugees or displaced families, and there is no end yet in sight. Our two partners are well respected, of the highest integrity and are admired by government officials and the displaced families. The repayment rates have been good, and we are gratified to see our partners focusing on what needs improving and to see that incorporated into the next loan cycles.
These loans have had a much broader impact than just the $30,000 we have given to loan recipients-they are helping improve life in the broader displaced community. First because the loans repaid are loaned out again to other people and secondly because our partners have leveraged their programs success to obtain other micro-credit funding as well from government and international funding sources.
The Colombia Project held a Strategic Planning meeting earlier this summer to take stock of what was working well, where we needed to improve and to focus on plans for the future. We agreed on the need for closer ties to our two partners, both through site visits and our partners visiting us in Miami. But we also agreed we should expand our efforts with a third partner in another area where poverty and displacement are major problems. We are pleased to announce that plans for a third micro-credit loan partnership were discussed during a Sept 19-21 site visit to Colombia.
The proposed Cartagena program would be under the direction of APRODEFA and Audes Jimenez Gonzalez, who is an internationally recognized community development leader in Colombia. Audes came to the attention of The Colombia Project through the ASHOKA Foundation, which identified Audes as an outstanding and effective agent for social change. Jack Edwards and Helene Dudley had the opportunity to watch her in action at a meeting with 15 displaced women who are emerging leaders and entrepreneurs and would be the core group for this expansion.
Jack and Helene also visited the FUNDEHUMAC program in Santa Marta and discussed a possible grant-funded initiative focused on indigenous Wayuu and Arzareo families who have been displaced due to economic development (mines, petroleum and a maritime port) in the Colombian states of the Guajira and Caesar. FUNDEHUMAC is already working with three Wayuu families that have an excellent track record with their loans and businesses to date.
In Santa Marta we met Isabel who is the sole support for her two aged parents, a paraplegic uncle and three children. She was displaced after her husband was killed. Marta used to own half of a town, but lost all her possessions and saw five of her children killed before she moved to Cienaga where she has set up a small store with the help of a Colombia Project loan.
Zaida feeds her family from proceeds from her informal luncheonette, set up under a tree. Despite the seemingly unending hardships, the families continue their struggle to make a better life for their children. In a humble house atop a nearly inaccessible hill in one of Cartagena's invasion barrios, the women voiced the same concerns that one could hear at any PTA meeting in the states the importance of a good education, how to protect their children from bullies and bad influences, how to increase the family's standard of living. Help to these families is money well spent.
With each visit to Colombia, we become more convinced of the merit of our mission to offer a helping hand to people who are capable and willing to do the hard work required to improve their lives. Thank you for your continued support of those efforts.