Microcredit in Central America
In many developing countries, self-employed represents more than 50 percent of the labor force. Access to small amounts of credit at reasonable interest rates allows poor people to move from initial, perhaps tiny, income-generating activities to small micro-enterprises. In most cases, microcredit programs offer a combination of services and resources to their clients including savings facilities, training, networking, and peer support.In this way, microcredit allows families to work to end their own poverty – with dignity and by helping them to better sustain themselves and their communities.Microcredit can also help poor women in different ways, by providing independent sources of income outside home, microcredit tends to reduce economic dependency of the women on husbands and thus help enhance autonomy.
Pep Bonet went to Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala to document the lives of people that have access to microcredit programs.
He visited agroforestry projects, which combine environmental sustainability with coffee production. He also documented traditional fishermen in their daily life, the cultivation of potatoes, organic coffee and corn.