Agros Blog

What is it about seeing those without hope and opportunity that stirs your heart?

This picture says so much to me personally about both hope and opportunity. This is a photo of a road to 48 families in Batzchocolá, a remote region of Guatemala’s Central highlands… built by the generosity of a Bellevue, Washington based mortgage company, Liberty Financial Group (www.lfgloan.com), who have partnered with Batzchocolá via the Agros Journey With A Village program.

Like the marvelous team of owners & employees of Liberty Financial who envisioned a new pathway to opportunity, so many of you recently responded to our recent year-end appeal letter and Matching Gift campaign. If you’re like me you’d probably like to know what happened, right?

Well, you met and surpassed the Matching Gift challenge!

As you may recall, the Matching Gift pool was $150,000, provided by the visionary giving of four different donors, $70,000 of which was for new business development loans and $80,000 unrestricted to go where needed most. The flurry of responses we received during the last weeks of December (both from gifts mailed in and gifts made online), had us continually moved and inspired. You would be too, especially if you could see all of the encouraging notes that came with each gift. For example, one donor who last year had donated $50 sent us a $1,000 gift, and attached a note that said, “Keep up the great work… I feel so privileged to join with you in this effort to serve those in need!”

The reality is that we are the ones who are privileged to be supported by you, at any gift amount. But what does this extraordinary generosity really mean? What does it mean for the families we all care most about? Your generosity means that:

• Enterprise loans totaling more than $140,000 can now be made to women wanting to start a new business of goats, or weaving, or specialty crops;
• Families planning on new crop initiatives for this Spring planting season will have seed, seedlings & fertilizer capital necessary to start on time;
• Unrestricted funds totaling more than $160,000 are enabling the National field staff in all five countries to continue moving forward with the village assessment and development that is so critical to village & family success.

Can you imagine what it will be like for these women to be given the opportunity to start new businesses for their families? Or what it means for the many farmers who can now begin planning for the Spring planting season, dreaming of the harvest to come?

The bottom line is that the lifeblood of Agros is dependent upon the continued support and generosity of people like you, and on behalf of all of the families in all of the Agros villages: THANK YOU!

Thank you for helping Agros build new “inroads” of hope and opportunity to more families in Central America and Mexico.