Small loans making a huge difference

Microcredit milestone is celebrated in S.L.

Mike Espinilla makes treasures from trash, as anyone who has ever seen his glass swans can tell you.

If he lived in America he'd be celebrated as an environmentalist who keeps fluorescent lighting rods out of the landfill, transforming them into works of art that would likely fetch an extra price at traveling art festivals because his ingenuity is so earth-friendly.

But Espinilla lives in the Philippines, where the proceeds from the small swans he makes simply house and feed his family. A recent order for hundreds of the tiny creatures means he can likely get his house back; he had to pawn it when money became tight.

As one of more than 10,000 microcredit clients who have received small loans through a Philippine affiliate of the St. Louis-based Enterprise Mentors International, Espinilla's prospects for prosperity — rather than continuing poverty — have never been brighter. Like more than 62,000 other individuals in six countries who've been granted otherwise unattainable loans through EMI, he has the chance to help pull himself out of poverty and to help his children do so permanently.

"Each family we serve has an average total of five dependents who are beneficiaries. It's not just about money, but about how people discover their own potential for rising above it," said Jovy Guanzon, executive director of the Philippine Microenterprise Development Foundation, a division of EMI. "We teach them that poverty is just a place, and they can move out of it when they're able to recognize their true potential."

Guanzon is in Salt Lake City this week, along with Carlos Rivas, executive director of Mentores Empresariales-El Salvador — another EMI affiliate — to celebrate EMI's 15th anniversary with a program and banquet held Friday night at the Marriott Hotel downtown. Some 960 people attended, including Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., LDS Church officials and a variety of civic and business leaders.

The organization was founded by a group of businessmen led by Menlo Smith, a former mission president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who served in the Philippines several years ago and came home vowing to do something about the poverty he had seen.

Smith created a microfinance organization that now includes among its board members two emeritus general authorities of the church as well as former Relief Society general President Mary Ellen Smoot, who is chairwoman of the anniversary banquet. All three members of the church's First Presidency attended and were honored during the event.

In his short remarks to the group, President Gordon B. Hinckley said Smith's call to be a mission president was a miraculous thing, that the mission leader was able to see the need of the people and create something that would benefit generations.

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