. The last two years working with the Genesis project have been a real faith journey for us at the CDCA as well as for the co-op members. We started the co-op with no funding for the building or machinery at all. We just knew that this project had to happen and that we would find the money somehow. We have not been disappointed. Over time, the money has trickled in, mostly from individual donors. To date, we’ve invested more than $130,000 in the building. It’s been a long struggle to get the co-op started, and we are excited because it looks like we have found funding for the purchase of the machinery. Unfortunately, we are lacking $100,000 to finish the building. We find ourselves in a predicament: no organizations want to finance the machinery until the building is finished, and none want to finance the building unless we have guaranteed funding for the machinery.
This is why we have decided to ask individuals to loan the CDCA the needed money, because most of the funding for the building so far has come from individuals in small gifts. The members of the Genesis spinning co-op have risked what they have – two years of their labor and time – because they have no money.
Leticia Lacayo is a member of the Genesis co-op. As a single mom and sole supporter of her family, she can’t afford to work all day without a salary. So for the past two years she has risen before dawn each morning to make and sell bread from her bicycle, arriving at the co-op around 10AM and working through the afternoon. Leticia doesn’t have anyone to look after her two children, so when they’re not in school they ride in her bicycle basket while she sells bread and play under the trees at the co-op while she works construction. Leticia cannot afford to give up on Genesis. “I want to be a great businesswoman…owner of our own business, to offer employment to people who need it, have a salary with dignity that meets all our needs. We have to aim at an elephant in order to shoot an elephant. We have to think big.”
Now Leticia and the other members of Genesis need investors with patient capital and long term horizons to think big with them. That’s what we mean by shared risk: they have risked their families’ futures in a way that most of us cannot imagine, and now they need other people to take a risk by helping finance their project.
If you know anyone with “patient capital” willing to invest with the poor, we are looking for folks to lend money to the CDCA’s Shared Risk Investment Fund for 5 years at 0-5% interest. Please have them write us at jhc@jhc-cdca.org
-- Becca
