After receiving Microcredit Plus from Friendship Bridge, Vicenta left the back-breaking life in the fields behind to pursue her weaving trade.
At Friendship Bridge, our philosophy is simple: We believe women are the key to economic development. Over the past year, Friendship Bridge offered more than 19,000 Guatemalan women loans and education programs to help them create their own solutions to poverty. Through microloans and education, you are helping to turn the tide in Guatemala by providing women the skills and resources to build sustainable futures. Renewable loans for as little as $125 allow them to enhance their own small businesses such as artisan trades, raising livestock, and making and selling food products.
Case in point: Vicenta Zaput Palax. From the age of 11, Vicenta worked in the cotton and coffee fields along the southern coast of Guatemala. With only three years of formal education, planting and harvesting year after year became a way of life. While working the fields had always put food on the table, what she really loved was weaving. After receiving Microcredit Plus from Friendship Bridge, Vicenta was able to turn her love for weaving into a business, capable of supporting herself and her family.
In fact, she is so successful that all of her children are now in school and she is also using what she has learned to help others in her community, Vicenta now leads an association of women artisans! Women like Vicenta are a perfect example of how microloans combined with education can empower women to find their dreams and become change agents in their families and communities.
The success of these programs and the women we serve, would not be possible without donors like you. Please consider making a significant impact with your donation this holiday season by investing in women through Friendship Bridge. Your donation will provide life-changing microloans and education programs to help women grow their businesses, create change for themselves, their families and communities, and like Vicenta, find their dreams.
