"It began with a circle of friends..."

In 2003, three Dallas women - Lucy Billingsley, Kaki Hopkins and Debra Skriba - made a journey into Mexico that would end up impacting the lives of many. They had been invited by the Grameen Foundation to look at the possibility of offering assistance to female "entrepreneurs" in a very poor rural area in Mexico.

They returned on the United Nation's "Day to Eradicate Poverty" and decided to take action, hoping to raise $780,000 to assist in the effort. Returning to Texas, the original group had grown to what is now called the "Dallas 30." By 2005 they had met their goal, but decided to continue.

The methods used to raise funds varied, often getting support from young women attending area high schools and colleges who learn about the organization and want to help. Then there are direct contributions and corporate sponsorships. "Chiapas Connectors" is a social group for people aged 21-40 with happy hours, events and a focus on supporting the mission.

By 2008, they had raised $3.3 million.

Today, at a special lunch being held at the Belo Mansion in downtown Dallas, Chiapas International is celebrating 10 years of building small businesses - very small businesses - in multiple Latin American countries.

And Chiapas International also announced that they had passed the $6 million mark in funds raised to help poor women in Latin America to create their own income-generating opportunities.

Chiapas International funnels economic assistance to on-the-ground organizations like AlSOL in Mexico, Esperanza in the Dominican Republic and the rest of Latin America through a Grameen Foundation office in Colombia to assist local residents in difficult conditions to begin building businesses from the ground up. The efforts support business opportunities of the most modern means.

"These are people who are starting businesses with a $250 loan," says Tricia Bridges, President and CEO of Chiapas International. "They buy thread to make shawls, or they buy candy, gum and cookies to open a shop in front of their homes."

The chances of getting rich are slim, but it does give the recipients an opportunity to move into a situation that is at least "profitable."

"Generally speaking, the annual income one of our borrowers makes varies greatly," says Kayla Villnow, Director of Community Investments for Esperanza, the group coordinating the effort in the Dominican Republic. "Those that participate in our group lending model however, receive six-month termed loans that average around $230 in size. For the businesses that this level of borrower is investing in, it would be fair to assume that they earn anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 a year.

"The average family that takes out a loan with us in the Dominican Republic lives on around two dollars a day. As you can imagine, two dollars divided among an average of five family members does not go very far."

Bridges usually makes two trips personally each year to the affected areas, and while she said much of the Dominican Republic is very nice and modern, there is a less-seen and depressing side to the island nation.

"There are a lot of Haitian Batays," Bridges said. "These are refugees from Haiti that have come into the sugarcane fields and have taken over ... well ... they're really abandoned tool sheds that they live in. They're very isolated and very poor."

In addition to squalid living conditions, Bridges cites a lack of basic living needs as simple as water purification that the organization looks to remedy.

The concept is based on the work of Dr. Muhammad Yunis, who took the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work in the area of microfinance. This concept takes the capital investment that is so common among business enterprises that require millions of dollars in investments, and reduces it down to a level that is possible for the poorest of people to gain access to. Yunis is credited with a boom of entrepreneurial opportunities in Bangladesh. Chiapas takes the same concept to Latin America.

These are not handouts. They are loans, and Chiapas International touts a 97 percent repayment rate on the loans they are making. And according to the Chiapas International Web site, there have so far been more than 242,000 of these loans made. The group has no plans to stop now.

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