In this video interview, Pedro Lacen, director of microfinance at Esperanza International, HOPE’s partner in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, discusses the unique role of Christ-centered microfinance in the Caribbean.
Several months ago, Peter Greer, HOPE’s president, sat down with Pedro to discuss Esperanza’s work in the Caribbean. In this excerpt, Pedro talks about the particular impact Esperanza and HOPE are having as Christian organizations and shares a story of how the God Provides films, shown at community bank meetings through HOPE’s partnership with Crown Financial Ministries, are impacting clients through their simple presentation of key stories from the Bible.
Dominican Republic
I spent my second full day in Kinshasa with the HOPE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) staff. Once again I spent the day in the field: this time visiting repayment meetings. As I said in yesterday’s post, since the election at the end of November, things have been unsettled in the capital city of Kinshasa. The staff is working hard to get our program back to normal, working hard to catch up on both repayments (collecting payments on existing loans) and disbursements (distributing new loans). So while I wasn’t able to see a normal operating environment while I was in Kinshasa, I did manage to cram a lot of action into two short days. 
HOPE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had a challenging couple of months, starting with the general elections that took place on November 28. There were accusations of fraud and tampering even before the election happened, and as you’d imagine, those cries grew louder after the election. 
I send you greetings from Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is right across the Congo River from Brazzaville. It’s about a 10-minute boat ride. Sounds like an easy day, right?
