Roatán receives thousands of tourists each year but the island’s largest peak season is now, with Semana Santa (Holy Week) having just passed. From Spring Breakers to retirees, foreign tourists flock to this island off the coast of La Ceiba in larger numbers to enjoy the beautiful beaches that the island has to offer. However, my trip two weeks ago as the peak season got underway served a different purpose.

The Roatán zone from our La Ceiba Branch Office currently serves over 300 clients, many of whom invest in businesses to serve the tourism industry, while many more run businesses serving the local communities. Despite the luxurious resorts offered to incoming guests, many locals continue to suffer in poverty. One such woman is Adeline.

Adeline is a proud and bold woman who raised eight children on her own and has had two grandsons, 12 and 13 years old, in her care since they were very young. The difficult economic situations she has faced prevented her from being able to learn to read and write and laments that there simply was not enough money to send her children to secondary school.

As a native to the island, Adeline is a native English speaker but also speaks Spanish. With greater migration into the island from mainland Honduras, Spanish is becoming more widely spoken there and many natives feel an amount of resentment toward this phenomenon. Because of this, Adeline and the other members of the group were thrilled to get a chance to have me there to chat in English.

I met Adeline while the Roatán Zone Credit Officer was working hard to get credit evaluations and other work done before the Semana Santa work holidays. These evaluations take place prior to each loan cycle to review the needs of each individual and their current economic situation.

While helping Orville with his credit evaluations, I arrived to the following standard question with Adeline, “Do you own your own home?” The answer I received was not what I had expected: “Well I did but three weeks ago it burned down.” Luckily no one had been at home when the fire started but she still has not been able to figure out the source of the fire. Where she lived, she did not have electricity, ruling out an electrical fire and did not have gas for her stove.

Until she is able to rebuild, Adeline has moved into the home of one of her six sons, about 15-20 minutes away along the unpaved road. She will continue working hard each day at her butcher shop in the market so that she can once again offer a home to her two grandsons, abandoned by their father.

Despite the various challenges faced by Adeline she continues to grow her business. With each loan cycle, she continues to take on larger amounts and pays back diligently, proving the success she has had within Adelante’s microlending model. Although she has a long way to go to make progress toward a new home, her loan history makes her eligible for our individual loan products. Once she begins rebuilding, Orville hopes to offer her with the support she needs to finish up the construction via a Home Improvement Loan.

I was personally amazed by how immediately Orville had responded to her tragedy in order to offer her hope for the future. Bringing our clients’ needs to the forefront and addressing how we can solve them is what we see as vital to successfully operating as a microfinance institution while fulfilling our social mission, and this is exactly what April being the Month of Microfinance is all about.

Her fellow Adelante borrowers also brought forth moral support, immediately displaying concern for what had happened. Adeline is very head strong and independent, which had originally made her reluctant to discuss the fire with her friends. However, the support from each of the women and from Adelante staff like Orville gave her enough confidence to open up and reminded her of just what it means to be part of a solidarity group.

I recently visited a rural area outside the city of Choluteca where we are opening a new assembly. Three of our clients from an existing assembly recently moved to this area and currently must walk an hour in the blazing sun just to catch the bus that takes them to their assembly every two weeks. However, we are in the process of identifying new clients in the area to form the new assembly. This will not only give more women in this community the opportunity to become business owners, these three clients will no longer have to make this long walk every two weeks.

This colonia lacks electricity, running water and every other type of public infrastructure one could hope for. It is literally a field in the middle of a dusty, scorching-hot desert. But the community’s residents are happy to be here. The Mayor of the city of Choluteca arranged for the land to be donated to them and they are currently in the process of receiving Dominio Pleno, or title to their land. One client – Sarahí – explained to me how they rented the home they used to live in, “It was in much better condition, but this land is ours.” She told me how, little by little, she knows their living conditions will improve, and how she and her husband are excited to construct a better home once they have the resources to do so.

During my visit, Sarahí explained to me how her son, Ariel, had been sick for weeks with an intestinal infection. She says he used to be “gordito” but is now very thin. As a mother myself, it was hard for me to imagine how one would keep her children healthy in this environment. I thought of how many times a day I tell my children to “wash your hands!” Here, there was not a faucet in sight. Instead, there were two wells available for the community’s inhabitants to access water for their families. To provide for her children the best she can, Sarahí sells honey that her husband produces from his small apiary.

One of the most extreme examples of inadequate housing within this settlement was this home – constructed from cardboard boxes, plastic sheets and sticks. Although the conditions that these families live under are depressing, especially to readers who have not been exposed to this type of poverty, my intentions for sharing are not to make the reader feel bad. Meeting with these clients was wonderfully inspiring for me. I talked at length with Sarahí and the other women. Each woman I met was very expressive in her gratitude for the opportunity to become an independent business owner, and was filled with ambition to better support their families.

Egipcia and Rosa are two other clients in this area. Rosa runs a small convenience store from her home, while Egipcia makes and sells tortillas next door. As one of only two stores of its kind in the community, Rosa sees great potential in her business. Currently she pays about $1.25 every two weeks to charge a car battery which in turn powers two light bulbs for her home and business. Although this does not give her sufficient access to electricity, it is a start. Egipcia also has limited access to electricity and must depend on an inefficient wood stove which to make her tortillas. Her home fills with smoke as she makes her tortillas and she and her children are left to breathe in the contaminated air. Egipcia would be an excellent candidate for an eco-stove – a project that we hope to undertake soon.

These women and their families are pioneers in search of a better life. They are the epitome of the human spirit – full of life, love for their children and hope for the future. Our Choluteca staff’s dedication to our institutional mission as demonstrated by the initiative   to open this new assembly was inspiring to me; and I was humbled by the warm, welcoming smiles that we received from our clients. For me, this visit re-affirmed my commitment to our work and reminded me how truly important it is.

This blog post was written by Sophia Anderson, Adelante Foundation’s General Manager. She started working with Adelante as the International Development Coordinator in 2008 and was promoted to General Manager in 2010.