As members of Evergreen Presbyterian Church, the founders of Fresh Start Micro Loans™ are in the midst of a community working out in practice what it means to follow Jesus Christ in a world of challenges and opportunities scarcely imagined as little as a generation ago and yet one for which these Biblical themes remain unchanged. We want to be what John Stott describes as a “Kingdom Community, a model of what human community looks like when it comes under the rule of God and a challenging alternative to secular society”.
With this in mind, Fresh Start Micro Loans™ aims for:
- Dignity, not Dependency
- Equity, not Debt
EF Schumacher in his pioneering book, Small is Beautiful, reminded us that “development does not start with goods (but) with people” and urged the development with “appropriate technology”.
Fresh Start Micro Loans™ enable individuals to establish a means to provide for themselves and their families and to serve their communities. The businesses are theirs, not ours; the business plans are theirs not ours; the enterprises are appropriate to the local economy, not the result of decisions made by those in another context, they are accountable primarily to their peers, not to us. Our involvement is limited to prayer and the initial seed capital. We long to see each business established on its own; we have no desire to foster dependency.
The challenges of so-called Third World debt have been well-documented. Although our Micro Loans are technically debt, we consider them more helpfully regarded as equity. The loans are interest-free, the funds are unsecured against any of the assets of the business, and there are no restrictive covenants on its operations. While we regard the repayment of the loans as an important part of maintaining the dignity of our partners, our priority is to see the businesses established.
In his work, The Mystery of Capital (2000), Hernando de Soto argues that, “the major stumbling block that keeps the rest of the world from benefiting from capitalism is its inability to produce capital”. The businesses belong to our partners. We want them to be profitable not just so that our partners can provide for themselves but so that they can reinvest and build on the foundations they are laying.
Fresh Start Micro Loans™ is a small step forward; the number of potential partners is unlimited. Setting aside temporarily as little as $200 could make all the difference.