The students were such good sports about chickens that walked freely in and out of their rooms, says Lisa Jones, advising director of BYU’s H.E.L.P. International, about the group’s summer 1999 project. They often lived without showers or flushing toilets, she adds. Plus they had to wait until it rained to wash their clothes because there was no water.
Each microcredit bank established by the students has 20 members, usually women, who draw small loans to help them establish or expand their own businesses
Chicken invasions, dirty clothes, and lack of running water notwithstanding, dedicated volunteers with H.E.L.P. International are, day in and out, found among the poor and disaster-stricken of Latin America, for whom they help provide an economic spark, business training, and good old-fashioned service.
The group’s acronym captures its mission-to Help Eliminate Poverty-and microcredit banks are its primary project. Formerly called H.E.L.P. Honduras, the program began taking shape in January 1999, when MBA student Jones and others responded to organizational behavior professor Warner P. Woodworth’s call to action to aid needy Hondurans in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. The program’s first three student volunteers left campus in April 1999; since then, thanks to the generosity of many contributors, a total of 51 students have traveled to Honduras with the mission of organizing microcredit banks.
H.E.L.P.’s volunteers invest an almost-evangelistic zeal in their cause. Our goal was to start 20 banks, Jones says of the summer 1999 effort. But we started more than 40-doubled our goal-because the students were such go-getters.
Because bank members oversee and encourage each other, and because each member’s eligibility for a loan depends on other members’ responsible repayments, such payday loans Louisiana loans have a very high repayment rate-worldwide rates average about 96 percent. Continue reading P. International, these women used small loans to build their businesses
