Marcelino Lopez had no choice but to start a new life several years ago when the threat of guerrilla violence forced his family to flee their village in rural Colombia. After witnessing others fall victim to attacks, he feared for his own family's safety.

"I didn't think we would live," Marcelino says. "I wanted to escape."

Without much more than $300 in cash and hope for a life free from terror, Marcelino, his wife and their children joined thousands of others in Barrio Nelson Mandela, a makeshift settlement just outside the city of Cartagena.

Marcelino needed money to support his uprooted family, but resources were scarce. "I thought, ‘How am I going to get a better house?'" Marcelino says. "We were living in a tent of black plastic."

Luckily, ACCION's microlending partner, Fundación Mario Santo Domingo (FMSD), started a lending office in the area to help migrants like him. With the help of a $95 loan from FMSD, Marcelino opened a tiny variety store.

A year and one more loan later, Marcelino owns the most successful butcher shop in the neighborhood. The capital from FMSD helped him to afford fresh meat, poultry and fish. With the profits from the store, Marcelino has been able to move his family into a concrete-block home on the barrio's main road, complete with a small storefront and counter.




Reprinted with permission from ACCION International.

To read another Global Envision article about the success of microloans, see Changing Tides: Building Human Capital in Rio's Largest Slum.



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