High up in the mountains outside of Comayagua in Honduras, where there is only one step road to climb, Marina Mazariegos has been growing coffee and corn since her youth. She’s lived here her whole life. Alongside her husband, she hopes to instill in their children the values of her organic farming tradition. She works hard and with her hands, but she’s grateful for the luxury of a faucet to harness water from the mountain and a machine to help her shell and clean the coffee.
After cleaning and processing her harvest, her resourcefulness led her to make organic fertilizer from the leftover pulp and shells, which she uses to continue her farming process. The crisp and cool air is ideal for growing coffee, so crops like those that Marina is able to harvest are sought after widely by roasters who supply American consumers. In order to grow, Marina took her first loan from WCCN partner AMC-Honduras in 2015 for 10,000 lempiras, the equivalent of $420. She had such great success with the use of her capital, it was only a year later when she took out her second loan. Like many of WCCN’s end-borrowers, she lives in an area that is difficult to reach, living a two-hour car ride from the nearest city and much too far from traditional banks. This remote lifestyle makes the loans provided by WCCN and its partners essential.
