NEWS RELEASE
PASO POR PASO
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Paso Por Paso, an Orillia-based non-profit organization that helps low-resource Mayan families in Guatemala, has been supporting Mayan women with microcredit funding to help grow their businesses.
The program provides seed money for the purchase of goods and materials to allow a start-up or further development of a business. Besides entrepreneurial and business skills, classes to assist in developing personal empowerment and leadership skills are also provided.
Additionally, Paso Por Paso supports infrastructure and community development, education and emergency initiatives in Guatemala.
The organization’s microcredit program is now underway with 90 participants across five Guatemalan communities in the Lake Atitlan region, including Tierra Linda, which Paso Por Paso specifically supports.
Each community has started training, and all participants have started developing their life plans (goals and strategies for personal development). Participants will be put in entrepreneurship groups of around 10 participants, who will support each other with business plans and savings, strengthening self- and group responsibility for repayments.
Seed capital loans for each business (individually or in groups) will be between $150 and $650, depending on the business plan and maturity of each business’s development. Loan repayment cycles are 12 to 18 months.
Program activities include:
• Socioeconomic study and selection of program participants
• Entrepreneurship training, including:
- Personal and small to medium sized business financing
- Business management tools
- Business planning
- Marketing and merchandising
- Quality control
• Personal development sessions, on topics such as:
- Personal empowerment
- Leadership
- Values and principles
• Formation of entrepreneurship groups
• Development of business plans, including market competitiveness study, and budgets
• Providing seed capital loans, to invest in initial opening of businesses
• Ongoing personalized technical assistance to each business
The latest published data shows that in 2020, Guatemala’s GDP was expected to have contracted by between three and 4.1 per cent. Although figures are not yet available on the economic impact of COVID-19, families in Guatemala have observed a decrease in commercial transactions and in remittances from North America.
Both of these disproportionately affect families, and especially women heads of households, living in poverty in Guatemala’s rural areas. Therefore, the microcredits made available to women and families could not come at a better time.
Paso Por Paso’s president, Doris Middleton, is excited about the microcredit program’s new structure.
“Due to COVID there were a few setbacks in its actual start-up date. Lockdown protocol in Guatemala was very tight in the beginning of the pandemic, so the women were not even able to travel to markets to sell their wares or produce,” she said. “This program will create opportunities for the women to explore other options to provide for their families. It is greatly needed at this point after the economically harsh past two years. We hope to be able to make the trek to Guatemala in 2023 and see the program in operation.”
Established in 2006, Paso Por Paso is a grassroots, community-based non-profit organization that helps low-resource Mayan families living in the beautiful highlands of Guatemala. Over the last 15 years, through the generous donations of Canadians, the registered charity raised over half a million dollars to support our programs in Guatemala.
For more information on Paso Por Paso and to learn how you can help, visit www.pasoporpaso.ca.
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