What If Your Life Depended on a Loan?
In Spanish, there is a saying: “nadie sabe para quien trabaja.” Translated, it means you never know who you are really working for.
Every day at ACCION USA we see the faces of those we work for, individuals, who with the help of business loans and financial education, fulfill their dreams of becoming financially independent and able to provide for their loved ones. However, sometimes we don’t really know exactly how our loan is working to change a life.
Hurricane Irene Damage in New Jersey -Picture taken by Monica Castillo
Today, we learned a life lesson on what our recent loan meant for a client named “Magda.” In thanking us, here is what she wrote to Karla, the loan consultant who helped her with her application (translated from Spanish):
“Thanks again for your help in closing the loan; at this moment, you don’t even realize how important it was. Hurricane Irene may have left us without power until this Friday and almost all our food would have perished. Thanks to the loan, we were able to stay at a hotel and purchase the food we needed, since I am no longer able to cook due to the lack of power. There was no way that my three daughters and I could survive at home without electricity and running water. On behalf of my daughters, I want to thank you again for your timely assistance. I thank God that we are alright and that our home and families are fine. I hope you and yours are also well.
Take care,
-Magda.”
What if your life depended on a loan? At ACCION USA, we know that our work literally transforms the life of every client and today I was reminded of the magnitude of our impact. Maybe we don’t really know who we are working for—we thought it was for a person, but in this case, it was for the preservation of life itself.
-Post by Paul Quintero, ACCION USA CEO. To find out more about ACCION loans, please visit www.accionusa.org