MicroEnterprise

One of the ministries we have gotten to see is that of Pastor Francisco Rosso and the town of Peralta. Pastor Rosso has been there since he was 17 years old and that was 22 years ago. Pastor did leave to go to school to get degrees in both theology as well as law but he is devoted to helping the community however he can so he returned to Peralta. There are about 12,000 people in the city center with about 18,000 total including the rest of the city. Peralta is a community that is about 40 miles from the main city. Being this far removed it is difficult for them to find opportunities to earn wages and support their families. Early on the community grew coffee but when crops were bad they needed to turn to something else to earn a wage so they learned to sew. Lack of health care is a primary concern for the community so leaders asked themselves “what can we do to help resolve the issue?” They decided education was the main way to help the community so they started a program to teach the community about things like good hygiene, prevention, etc. They also decided they needed to find ways to bring money into the community to help pay for health care. One solution was to apply for a grant. They beat out everyone else and won the grant which would fund the program for three years, where at that point the community was expected to be in a position to sustain the program themselves. After the three years ended Peralta had not saved enough money to self support. The foundation reviewed the situation and decided to invest one more year into Peralta, so they were funded by the foundation for 4 years total. After the forth year the community had eno0ugh money saved to fund the program for 3 months. After that the people worked another 6 months for free. There were a few months after that that the program had to close before they found other creative ways to support the efforts. One of those ways was to make T-Shirts and Polo shirts which began in January of 2008. The shirts Peralta make are good quality shirts, very well made and comfortable. The colors are great as well. The shirts are often used by organizations and groups for putting logo’s on or other custom designs. The business is fair trade which provides a fair wage to the workers and the business is also providing needed funds for the entire community to get health care. This community is a GREAT example of wholistic community development and IGN hopes we, and our partners, can come along side them to support them and their efforts.