I first traveled to Honduras in the summer of 2005, and like most great experiences in my life, it was unexpected.  My home church decided to adopt a small rural Honduran village by the name of Quiscamote.  At the time the trip was announced, I had neither the funds nor the desire to go on a trip to Honduras.  However, a month before the trip, a good friend of mine who had planned on going with her father became seriously ill and she was unable to travel and she asked if I wanted to go in her place.  A month later I arrived in Honduras.  As we drove through the decrepit vestiges of Honduras’s largest city, San Pedro Sula, to either side of the road, junkyards and rusty factories marked the countries industrial struggle.  In the distance, huge clouds of smoke billowed into the sky as sugar cane was harvested and loaded on rickety trucks. This industry was sharply juxtaposed by the green jungle and mountain peaks that lie ahead of us.

At the end of the day we arrived in La Union, which is a city of about 3000 people, located in the impoverished Lempira province in southwest Honduras.  In La Union, we stayed in a beautiful compound built by Honduras’s largest evangelical church, Vida Abundante.  They constructed the compound specifically for church groups and missionaries who work in the region.  From La Union, treacherous dirt roads provide access to many of the smaller surrounding villages.  It was on these roads that we traveled to our village of Quiscamote, which was about an hour car ride from the compound.  The village consists of about 60 small, one to two room, mud brick homes that are inhabited by as many as twelve people.  For sustenance, they eat one meal a day of corn gruel and flour tortillas.  Before we arrived, they cooked meals on little fires in the middle of their homes.  Because of this ritual, respiratory problems are the second leading cause of death among Honduran children.  We solved this problem by installing mud-brick stoves with chimneys in each house.  My church has since tried to help these villages with other problems, including water pollution and a lack of accessible bathrooms.  This first trip to Honduras was only the beginning.

I did not return to Honduras until the summer of 2007.  At that time I was in Virginia Beach enrolled in a leadership training seminar with my campus church.  At the leadership training program I met a girl who also had a vested interest in Honduras.  She introduced me to her father, Bill Fettis, a very successful businessman near my hometown in west Michigan.  Despite all his successes, Bill’s passion was for the people of Honduras.  On my next trip to La Union, I began to ask more questions about Bill.  I found that he and his partner Judith Zelaya, the Mission Director of Vida Abundante Church, had made much of what my church was doing possible.  Upon returning from Honduras, I met Bill for the first time.  Throughout the rest of the summer and the beginning of the following school year, I had more chances to meet with Bill and listen to his vision.  He informed me that although stoves, water and latrines were important, further steps had to be taken in the Lempira region.  He wanted to apply recent developments in microfinance to aid individuals in the region.  But most microfinance firms would not invest in rural communities because of uncertainties and inefficiencies.  We needed to try something different, and then, once more, God intervened and provided another way.  I had to wait for a few months though.  For a more in-depth explanation of microfinance visit http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.11.947/.

Although I had good intentions, unfortunately good intentions and a pure heart are only components of a comprehensive strategy to help people.  I knew I needed to learn more about microfinance, how it worked, and when it failed.  I learned that the two most important mechanisms underlying microfinance, the social capital necessary to impose the conditions of the loans and the indirect effects on the recipients’ communities, are founded on the importance of the interactions between people in these social systems.  I also began working as a research assistant for Derek Stafford, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan studying in the Political Science Department and the Center for Complex Systems.  Derek recommended readings on complex systems and network analysis, which is his specific area of expertise.  Complex systems, a new academic discipline, rooted in computer modeling, game theory, and advanced traditional statistics, was designed to understand the very interactions in social systems upon which microcredit bases its processes.  We realized that we might be able to use these new methodologies and technologies to improve microfinance firm procedures to ease rural economic development endeavors. [explanation of network analysis]

Upon coming to the realization that network analysis provided the opportunity to improve microfinance, my next action was obvious.  I had to connect microcredit and network analysis.  I arrange a meeting to introduce Derek and Bill, during which they decided to collaborate.

My endeavor became a reality.   I arranged for Derek to travel with Bill to the Lempira Region and this set the groundwork for a successful venture. Derek became familiar with the Lempira region, developed his relationship with Bill and become acquainted with Judith.  After Derek’s stay, he and I worked with Judith to target a specific area and group within the Lempira province for a case study.  We selected a defined geographical region of 44 rural villages, which consist of approximately 2500 households with a total target population of 10,000 individuals.  Through Judith, we have enlisted local support and informed consent from the leaders in each village to participate in this case study.  We have also taken the initial steps to train a team of twenty translators from the La Union high school who will be helping our study free of charge.

I returned to school on September 5, 2008 and immediately began to build a research team capable of reaching 10,000 individuals in a 12 week period.  I successfully recruited 22 undergraduate students to dedicate their summer to Honduras and I focused on preparing the team for the work in Honduras.  The team arrived in Honduras in May to begin the first phase of the data gathering process.  An earthquake, a supposed military coup, many truck rides, long hikes and a total of three months later, the summer research was a complete success.  The team gathered network analysis data on 32 of the target towns.

On August 1st, under a tree in La Union, myself and friends Mike, Dan and Pat decided on the name Union Micro Financial in English and Unión MicroFinanza in Spanish as the name of the organization that will distribute loans.  We are currently in the process of putting the organization together.  On January 1st, 2010 we hope to be back in Honduras for a planned two year duration to continue the research and begin administering loans.

No matter what the future holds I am thankful for the love and faith in God that has brought me to this point, the love and faith that will continue to guide me, and the love and faith in and for the people of Honduras and the experiences that have led me to them.