Meet Charlotte Foote, a 10-year old adventurer from Boston who traveled deep into the northern Nicaraguan bush last month to meet smallholder farmers and their families. Her father William Foote, Founder and CEO of Root Capital, shared with us a letter from Yarilecsa, a young girl whose family received a loan from their coop (financed by Root Capital) for a solar unit to electrify their home.
Warm greetings,
I am writing to you with great respect to thank you for the opportunity that you have provided to us through UCPCO [her family's farmer association] to have energy in our home. I am thanking you for this solar panel because now I will be able to do my schoolwork at night, to watch television programs, and also stop contaminating the environment with the smoke from the kerosene lamp and candles that we use to see at night. Although I had to sacrifice my 15th birthday celebration in order to have this benefit, I believe that the sacrifice is not made in vain – I know that I will be able to celebrate many birthdays with the academic success that I will achieve now that we have electricity in our home.
Root Capital is a nonprofit social investment fund that provides capital, financial education and market links to small-scale producers in developing countries through a unique rural finance approach. Like E+Co, Root Capital aims to fill “the missing middle” gap, businesses that are too big for micro finance but too small for traditional banking.
Recently, they made a small PV loan in Nicaragua that financed the purchase of solar units for 50 farm households. The solar units were purchased from E+Co investee Tecnosol, who recently won a GTZ bid that helped subsidize the price of the systems in 3 different parts of Nicaragua.
While I am sitting in NY and NJ brainstorming integrating energy inputs along the agriculture value chain, what Charlotte saw on the ground in Nicaragua has provided me with an inspiring example of how E+Co and Root Capital’s Nicaraguan clients are working together to provide benefits to farmer families.
By Audrey Desiderato, LaRocco Fellow