Arbor Assets
U.S. 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2009
At Arbor Assets, we contribute financial and knowledge-based resources to assist poor, rural communities in less-developed countries engineer their own economic development. We are presently working exclusively in Honduras and Nicaragua.
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About Our Foundation
Micro-Lending
We are principally a micro-lending company, though we also make strategic, capacity-expanding grants to our partner organizations, usually in terms of additional education, equipment, or materials. As a micro-lending company, we establish funds for our partner organizations to parcel out and administrate. We presently have three partner organizations; two in Nicaragua and one in Honduras. They all operate a general fund, which is parceled into micro-loans following certain guidelines. We also create funds explicitly for the purchase of bio-sand water filters, and, most recently, improved ovens.
Principle Clients
Our micro-loan clients are principally women. While women generally comprise the majority of the agriculture labor force throughout the developing world, they tend to be significantly less productive because they have less access to land, resources, capital, and destination markets. However, addressing this historical inequity can bring a real windfall: multitudes of studies have shown that women, in much higher numbers when compared to men, tend to reinvest their income directly into their families’ food and water supplies, healthcare, home improvement, and schooling.
Water Restoration
We believe that increased access to necessary inputs substantially builds women’s capacities and skill sets, and that in doing so, these improvements resound powerfully through families and communities to more speedily engineer greater economic development. Furthermore, decades of experience has plainly demonstrated that women make better microloan clients in terms of their repayment rates when compared to men. For this and the several reasons above, over 95% of our presently outstanding loans are to women. We also look for leadership structures that include women in determining who will be our NGO partners, as well as the water committees that we collaborate with..Â
Wildlife Preservation
We feel it is important to support the local economies and ecologies of the communities in which we work as much as possible – especially within the solutions we advise for their greatest problems. The bio-sand water filter’s material components, as well as the labor needed for their manufacture, are all locally sourced and are therefore a direct boon to the community’s economy. The same can be said for the improved ovens we help make available. We also include a ‘good environmental stewardship’ clause in every micro-loan we issue, meaning that these funds can only be used for pursuits that do no substantive harm to the surrounding ecology
Achieving Water Security
Throughout the developing world, nearly a billion people lack access to an improved water source free of pathogens, parasites and disease. Since such water must frequently be collected from a distance, sometimes queued for, and carried back to the home, it is acquired at the expense of time spent in school, family care, or income generating endeavors, and – given that this task is generally performed by women and girls – it is also at the expense of advancing women’s rights, education, and opportunities.
Your Help Counts
We appreciate your donations and support!
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Our Current Projects & Partners
We put our resources into two types of investment projects: 1) micro-loans; and 2) resource and capacity expansion for our partner organizations
Micro-Loan Projects
… finances are first established within an operating fund and are then loaned out and administrated by our field partner
Capacity Expansion Projects
… we invest directly in our partner organization by helping them to further develop their strengths and resources.
Workshops
we work directly with The Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation
Nicaragua
Our first regional partner was The Savings and Credit Cooperative of Orfilia Vasquez (COACOV)
Honduras
Our first partner was The Regional Association of Agricultural Services of Eastern Honduras