Letters...

Partners in Business

The Katalysis Partnership, working with five indigenous NGOs in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, has over 500 community banks comprising of 10,000 women and a loan portfolio of $2.5 million. Our rapidly growing network is also heavily involved with solidarity groups and individual microloans as well, but the community-banking model inspired by the Grameen example is our favorite program.

Beyond yourself, there are two other people who have deeply influenced our progression in microcredit development. John Hatch, who helped us get started, and Riane, whose book, The Chalice and the Blade, and personal consultation have provided information regularly business with southern NGOs .

I have just returned from a Katalysis director's meeting in El Salvador and I continue to be amazed at:

• how well the women of Central America are able to bring their economic achievements and newly found personal sense of empowerment into their family life, and the remarkable acceptance of this by their husbands, in spite of a centuries old culture of machismo, or male domination of women. Liberation of the female side of humanity is absolutely critical to ending poverty in the world!
• how much our southern partner organizations value our partnership as they participate on our board of directors, control our programmatic context and content, and invite northerners into their homes, families and management structures. We are firm believers that partnership is not only a more just way of doing business, it is also a more effective way of doing business!
• how rich the interchanges are among our partners. For example, FAMA in Honduras has now evolved a model of community banks composed entirely of solidarity groups. This catches the solidarity group features of larger loans and even tighter peer-cooperation along with the training efficiencies and community building outcomes of the traditional community-banking model. Now PROCOMES of El Salvador and MUDE of Guatemala are arranging exchanges with FAMA with an eye towards adopting this new model.

We hope to soon add Alex Counts to our Board of Directors. He's interested and so we!

Robert E. Graham
Founder
Katalysis
North South Development Partners
1331 commerce st
Sockton CA 95202 – 1012 – USA,
Tel –209-943-6165
Fax: 209-943-7056
June 16, 1997

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