Over the past 3
months, I’ve had the blessing of working with a few of our amazing Haitian
pastor partners and the business owners within their congregations and it has
been an extremely fruitful and rewarding process. 

Our approach was to have the pastors select a group of
individuals from their congregation who they knew to be both successful
business owners and solid men & women of faith.  This way they had a support network within
the church of others they could seek for help, counsel, and spiritual support
under the supervision of their pastor. 
In total we gave out 18 loans to 4 different church groups this summer. 

One gentleman, Augustin Jean Louis, runs a
very successful bakery business called Boulangerie Pain De Vie (Bread of Life
Bakery) with 2 locations, 3 employees at each. 
When AIM first met him he only had one oven at the nearest location but
was making a good profit on the bread he was able to produce.  By his own success he was able to purchase 2
more ovens, triple his production, hire some workers, and grow his
profits.  He has a dream of one day
owning 10 stores. 

The money we lent him gave him the opportunity to purchase
more products and turn it into additional profits.  It also served as
the first step in what we hope will be a long-term relationship.