WHY SUPPORT US?

HERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS WHY

Over ten years of experience. We began our microcredit lending activities more than a decade ago and have a very good track record in terms of the lending performance of our MFI partners and the improvements in the lives of our clients and their children. We have to date made over $2.6 million in micro-loans to over 6,200 women micro-entrepreneurs with benefits flowing to over 31,000 poor entrepreneurs and their families. Our clients have paid back over 96% of the amounts we have lent them over this period of time.

A strong management team. We have a strong management team, board of directors, board advisor and volunteer. We have many decades of collective experience in all aspects of microcredit and business matters.

100% of your funds go to client loans. The funds you contribute or lend to Open to Grow go directly into loans to poor women entrepreneurs. We maintain a low overhead that over time has been funded for the most part by our directors and more recently from interest on loans to our MFI partners. Our primary objective now is to achieve financial self-sufficiency while helping our MFI Partners and their clients to continue producing excellent results.

Your funds are lent and re-lent many times. Principal repayments from loans made by our MFI partners to their clients are re-lent to other poor women entrepreneurs, over and over again. Thus your grant, donation or loan to Open to Grow will continue to do good work for many years after it is made.

You are helping poor Indigenous Women to move forward. We lend to primarily to poor Indigenous women entrepreneurs. History tells us that generally speaking women repay their loans at a higher rate than men. In addition to re-investing a portion of their profits in their businesses, women use the remainder of their profits to enhance the lives of their family members by making small improvements to their shelters/homes, buying better quality food and clothing, improving nutrition and health cars, and paying school fees to keep their kids in school. Thus benefits from their small businesses flow to others in their communities in the form of purchases of goods.

We have two amazing MFI Partners. SERVIGUA operates in Guatemala and PANA PANA in Nicaragua. They are run by Indigenous management and staff and mainly serve Indigenous clients. This is a great joy for our Founder as he has spent over 40 years working with Indigenous groups throughout Canada and now Central America. These two MFIs are Indigenous, small, efficient, and very well run. Their performances are among the best we have seen in over a decade working in Central America. We believe that loans to their clients made with funds from Open to Grow will produce positive results for all stakeholders.