An Inca legend from high in the Andes mountain range of South America tells of the Eagle and the Condor, two magnificent birds that have flown the skies and held special historical symbolism for the Peruvian people. It’s derived from an ancient prophecy made several thousand years ago by Holy Men concerning the reunion between the long-separated people of the Eagle and the people of the Condor.

In the beginning all the earth's people were one, but long ago they divided into two groups and each followed a different path of development. The people of the Eagle were highly scientific and intellectual, and the people of the Condor were highly attuned to nature and the intuitive realm. At this current juncture in earth's history, the Eagle people will have reached a zenith in their amassing of scientific knowledge, technology and technological tools, expression of high art, and the ability to build and construct. They will even develop tools and technologies that will expand the mind, and they will produce technical miracles of unimagined power and breadth. The enormous accomplishments and technologies will bring tremendous material wealth to the leaders of the Eagle world. In this same era, the people of the Condor, people of the heart, the spirit, the senses, and the deep connection with the natural world, will be highly developed in their intuitive skills. But at the same time, they will be hungry and impoverished for knowledge that will enable them to be successful in the material world. Now is the era for the two groups to rejoin and share their knowledge and wisdom. The Eagle and the Condor will fly together in the same sky, wing to wing, and the world will come into balance [1].

This parable inspired the creation of a Non-Government Organization, Eagle Condor Humanitarian (ECH) in 2002. It grew out of a university NGO course I taught over a semester called “NGO Management.” The course consisted of readings on microfinance, Third World economic, social entrepreneurship, NGO management, and more [2]. Class members not only read research articles, heard my lectures, and held debates.

Student teams were also formed for group projects to be designed during the semester. The class consisted of graduate students of the Masters of Public Administration (MPA), Romney Institute of Public Management, in the Marriott School of Business, Brigham Young University, Utah, USA [3]. One of the classes, a Peruvian student, proposed others join him in designing a new NGO for the impoverished people of Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. That little project grew through several iterations since 2002 into what became Eagle Condor Humanitarian, hoping to help fulfill the ancient Inca prophecy by uniting the people of both regions and building a better future. The primary focus was on microfinance, but it included additional humanitarian services through the years. It has evolved through its various nonprofit strategies in bringing the words of the Holy Men to a vivid reality. Most of the student team and myself, as founders, were North Americans, who collaborated and worked along with the Peruvian project leader. Since those early days, ECH has wrought wonderful changes in the lives of thousands of Peruvians and those of other nations, and will continue to do more good in the future.

Eagle Condor’s Purposes 

The four-fold mission of ECH began with the following objectives:

• Create sustainable hope and dignity within people of underdeveloped areas, through purposeful and well-planned humanitarian field programs

• Endeavor to provide them microfinance and employment opportunities while teaching principles of good business practice which enable them to be self-sustaining, while raising their standard of living

• Through grassroots efforts provide a rich and predictable real-life experience of humanitarian charity for adults, youth and families who want to offer a hand of charity, feeling like they can make a difference in the lives of others

• Rollout a perpetuating and respected organization where members and donors are confident their contributions are making a difference

The ECH case below describes and analyzes how the organization originated, along with its program design, systems, structure, funding, and evolution through various phases for two decades. We will also critique some of its weaknesses, failures, and challenges as it faces the future. 

This research may best be described by Professor William Foote Whyte of Cornell University who was my mentor for a number of years. In his 1982 address to the American Sociological Association as its new president, he called for social scientists to utilize our concepts and theories in applied ways. He argued that we should not merely study what is, but what ought to be. His was a clarion call for new “social inventions” to solve human problems [4]. Inspired by Whyte, this paper also draws on research from business, MFI experts, and other sources [5-8].

Establishing Eagle Condor Humanitarian 

After the NGO design course ended and we began ECH in 2002, my former MPA student became the first director of the program in Peru, after friends and I raised the start-up capital for our new NGO. We sent him to the Philippines for a month to work and learn from an earlier NGO I had established there in 1990. With advice and direction from the new, small ECH board of trustees we had formed in Utah, and using the initial start-up plans from the student group in my class, things began to roll out. A small team was hired in Peru, training programs were launched, and the client base grew. Within several years, ECH expanded into the Cusco area and the Sacred Valley of indigenous villages. Also, efforts were launched in northern Peruvian towns like Piura, Chiclayo, and Trujillo. At that time, unemployment affected more than 60 percent of all people in northern Peru. Sixty-four percent of the families were categorized as “poor” by government officials. So, there was much work to do.

As an example of its expansion as the NGO was rolled out, the branch of ECH in Trujillo grew from 2 to 60 active loans in its first year. Twelve months later, they had given out about 120 loans since the opening of the area. About 40 microloans were soon paid off, but another 20 had been lost or forgiven due to the borrowers’ circumstances. The majority of the loans were between $300 and $1,000 US dollars. Some 60 percent of all the loans were to males and about a fifth of the loans exceeded $1,000 to those individuals growing larger businesses with multiple employees. 

Eagle Condor as an Organization

ECH’s structure was led by a volunteer board of directors in the U.S. and an established partner, Asociación Andes, as its own Latino organization with an ECH volunteer board in Peru. At the outset, the organization’s paid employees included: Jaime Figueroa (coordination of donations, expeditions, and programs) in Salt Lake City and Lima, along with Oswaldo Tello (Northern Peru field director), three loan officers, an administrative assistant, a nurse, and an engineer, all in Peru. ECH also rented a house in which Tello and his family lived and where all activity was based. A retired Peruvian volunteer managed the construction of houses that occurred throughout the year, a parallel program of ECH.  Other staffers helped with expedition activities. The engineer helped in the proper design of sewage systems and construction of houses, schools and more [9]. 

ECH Funding

To maintain and grow its programs, Eagle Condor raised money through various strategies. They have included personal contributions from friends and family. In some cases, supporters secured donations from their religious congregations, neighborhood associations, and/or business networks. A number of Utah area corporations made significant financial contributions from their business foundations [2]. 

Another major instrument for securing ECH resources for microenterprise training and microloans, was organizing humanitarian expeditions of 10-14 days in which North Americans would each donate several thousand dollars to ECH, part of which would cover their travel expenses. Usually, $1,000 above and beyond travel costs would go to our NGO programs upon arrival in country. 

Humanitarian Programs and Services

The numbers above are but illustrative of what began in Peruvian towns, one after another. Gradually, more ECH programs were implemented to supplement microenterprise efforts. They arose from the pleas of the poor as perceived by the staff and interns who would then provide additional support for individuals, families, and neighborhoods. Over time, Eagle Condor helped start and/or collaborated with other NGOs offering various programs to Peru’s poorest individuals and families. They include the Andean Children’s Fund, Chasqui Humanitarian, HELP International, Southern Cross Humanitarian, and Crecer, an organization sponsored by one of the author’s other NGOs called Mentors International. ECH’s mission differed from almost all of the regulated MFIs in the Peruvian market.  Perhaps it was most similar to the mission of Caritas Peru, a Catholic nonprofit that provided economic development programs, along with disaster relief and social services to the very poor such as housing, food, and other support [10].

From the outset, Eagle Condor offered expeditions to Peru from the United States. They were established to accomplish several things. One was to increase the levels of public interest in ECH and generate buy-in from donors and supporters in the U.S. that would ensure the flow of future donations. A second purpose was to generate impacts that aided Peru’s poor. The range of these social services consisted of such interventions described below.

ECH launched humanitarian expeditions of North Americans, groups that labored as volunteers in Andean villages most days, but could extend their stay for a tour of Machu Picchu afterward. Volunteers traveled to Peru for 10-14 days of volunteering, paying not only for the costs of travel and on-the-ground experiences, but contributing additional monies that could be used for local needs. Each person paid one’s own way, taking extra suitcases full of donated goods such as tools, books, clothing, medicine and/or computers, laboring among the poor. Depending on their skills and backgrounds, they used their time and energy in building houses and schools, offered school teaching, provided microenterprise training, and more. In some cases, U.S. specialists with professional skills such as medical or dental services, provide their expertise in free clinics. ECH became an impressive example of North Americans reaching out to others and building them up in impoverished rural Peru.

The brief list below suggests the range of community services and microlending over the years:

• Microfinance 

• Microfranchise 

• Self Help Lending Groups 

• Literacy 

• Square Foot/Small Scale Gardening

• Women’s Leadership Training 

• Producer Cooperatives 

• New Technologies 

• Healthcare Innovations

For nearly two decades, Eagle Condor has engaged in multiple efforts to assist and empower the people of the Andes region in South America. With the above summary of ECH humanitarian ventures, we turn for more depth about microeconomic strategies.

Peruvian Economics and ECH Microfinance

The ugly realities of Peruvian poverty and suffering were primary motivations driving Eagle Condor’s founding with its emphasis on microfinance. Over decades, the nation suffered through sky-high inflation of up to 7,600 percent annually. At some points, Peru’s GDP dropped by 20 percent, and more than 55 percent of the people were living below the official poverty line. Since the mid-2000s, signs of improvement have trended better, including less inflation and higher exports [11]. Through much of the last two decades, however, the abysmal incomes of those under the poverty rate were around $5.50 per day, a meager amount [12]. Certainly, the poor in Peru have continued to struggle over the years [13,14], problems which gave rise to Eagle Condor.

In each of the past 15 years or so, ECH had an average of 150 microenterprise clients who received business training. Upon graduating they qualified for microloans for small scale enterprise start-ups that provide greater stability for their communities. Ongoing new self-reliant classes were established and ECH managers continued mentoring and working with participants to create solid self-reliant business for families. As an illustration, in 2014, among adults who went through microenterprise training earlier, some 73 percent were continuing to operate 18 months afterward. Poor family incomes had averaged the U.S. dollar equivalent of only $146 monthly before starting microenterprises. But they had grown by 32 percent a year later up to an average of $216 per month. Perhaps more importantly, these families learned new principles of money management including the need for personal savings. Thus, families grew their monthly savings from a mere $46 to a new high of $88 per family, a 46 percent jump, results that, while small in terms of people, help promise of a better future.

As such changes occurred, Eagle Condor continued efforts to foster jobs among the poor by offering workshops and mentoring to clients, along with microloans. Below is a summary of typical EHC microentrepreneurial training, using a range of workshops to foster economic development through small business creation.

Eagle Condor Peru Training

• Workshop 1a: Business idea generation & evaluation (9 hours) 

• Workshop 1b: Strategies to help a micro-business grow (6 hours) 

• Workshop 2: How to design a business plan (9 hours) 

• Consulting: Work with participants to elaborate viable business plans (One day a week during 5 weeks) 

• Workshop 3: How to obtain funding to implement a business plan (6 hours) 

• Workshop 4: Small business ongoing management (32 hours) 

• Workshop 5: New & existent small businesses startup & launch (15 hours)

Over the years, ECH recruited and trained potential Peruvian staffers to operate its various programs on the ground. The author, as directed by the U.S. board, mobilized some of his university students as research interns who travelled to Peru and worked with the local ECH staff, helping run their offices, assist in training sessions to offer mentoring skills to clients, and more. They also conducted research to track and evaluate program efforts. All were fluent Spanish speakers and had lived for a year or two throughout Latin America. These students assisted the Peruvian ECH staff in-country and also collected data on the microcredit programs.

At its beginning in 2002, Eagle Condor Humanitarian’s microcredit program was somewhat unique. Like many of the regulated MFIs in Peru, but unlike other NGO MFIs, group lending and village banking processes were not used by ECH. The original selection of clients back then also did not follow the industry norms of typical MFIs. At the start of ECH programs, a large pool of potential clients was selected based on people’s needs and interests. Unlike many microcredit programs which favor female clients, preference on ECH client gender was not given, and strict emphasis on the poorest of the poor was not followed, as more successful candidates were viewed as agents for job growth as well. By 2004, potential microloan clients were invited to multiple hours of training from ECH personnel regarding business idea formation, business planning, marketing, and basic accounting. These training sessions were free, and represented no obligation to the participants [15].

Those that attended the required training were next eligible to present a business plan, and then they could make a proposal for a loan in order to perhaps receive start-up capital. The ECH Andes board in Chiclayo, which was composed of community members with relevant business experience, reviewed the merits of each application. If rejected, instructions were given for how to improve the proposal. Many times, when accepted, the loan amount requested was modified according to the judgment of the board. ECH offered two basic loan types. Participants that did not have their own businesses were eligible for an initial business incubation loan of up to $1000, while applicants that currently had an operating small business were eligible for a business development loan of up to $2,000. While a participant was repaying that first loan, he or she could potentially become eligible to receive a parallel loan according to the needs of the business. At the start of my student’s study, 37 loans had been made. On all loans, ECH charged a flat rate of 1.5 percent per month, or 18 percent annually, with no other transaction fees. 

Services Provided

With an intensive focus on the success of the clients, ECH was committed to a holistic operational approach. An objective was to find those participants with exogenous factors in their lives that would likely strengthen the success of their participation in the program. Health exams and psychological testing were required in order to attempt to determine or predict whether potential participants were sufficiently healthy, physically and emotionally, to operate a business successfully over the years to come. Once the potential participant began, he or she was given basic preventable health care from a staff nurse.

ECH also provided extensive business training and coaching. After clients received their loans, they also received continued one-on-one business coaching, as well the opportunity to attend monthly meetings with other clients to discuss their business progression. This aspect of ECH’s program thus provided a kind of clinic to foster “continuous improvement,” a Japanese management hallmark of best practices used by successful corporations worldwide.

Metrics Reported

Many microfinance programs measure effectiveness in terms of payback rate and operational or financial sustainability. ECH made a greater emphasis on gathering data on the strength of the businesses that were being financed. ECH records and reports to stakeholders tracked the gross revenues, net income, net profit margin, net assets, return on assets, and net monthly income increase. This monitoring required further monthly client meetings and limited the load capability of loan officers. In fact, while many MFIs served an average of 200 clients per loan officer, ECH usually had only three loan officers who were in charge of fewer current and potential participants. The emphasis was heavily weighted in terms of quality, not quantity. 

Interest Rates

Eagle Condor Humanitarian wanted to be fair in applying one flat interest rate for all loans. This rate, at 18 percent annual interest, was considerably below the market rate in Peru, which was closer to 36 percent. So, this essentially was interest rate subsidization, and represented a benefit to its clients. The subsidization of the interest rate was coherent with the principles of the ECH organization in which interventions were focused on those individuals that appeared to have the characteristics to ensure their success. However, some of these participants represent higher levels of risk than others. Those that were, brought higher risk benefits to a greater degree than those that represented lesser risk. And sometimes those that represented lesser risk were those that were the best and most “deserving” clients, as a staffer argued.  When the best clients shoulder more of the risk, it would inhibit growth and the attendant positive consequences to the client and the community.

Therefore, so that the best clients were not required to subsidize the riskiest clients, it made greater sense to simply assess the market risk of each client, and then deduct the flat subsidization provided by ECH. This seemed especially appropriate when the business clients had credit histories with the Peruvian credit bureau and had successfully repaid previous loans. 

Intensive Client Targeting

One of the most interesting issues that ECH debated internally was whether intentionally concentrating a high degree of effort on a small client base was preferable to a more operationally efficient program that affected larger numbers of people. For example, instead of paying salaries for a nurse, loan officers, and an engineer, more clients could receive microloans if such staff didn’t require salaries. Another possibility was for ECH to serve basically an informational role by directing interested parties to the most appropriate lending institution, including competing NGOs and banks, not just to be retained as Eagle Condor clients. In this way, their impact would be distributed to greater numbers of people.

The Peruvian ECH board determined that the key to deciding the proper level of involvement lay in considering the entire mission of the organization. One key differentiating factor between ECH and other larger microfinance institutions was that donors and volunteers from the United States and Peru wanted to be involved in the solution. In addition to donating money, they want to feel that they were working with the beneficiaries, perhaps using some of their unique skills (whether in construction, crafts, or business organization) to benefit others. This more personal interaction made the expedition volunteers more of an integral part of the ECH organization, around which other activities could be structured. Thus, the organization’s structure needed to be different from a savings and loan or banking institution that was mostly interested in increasing profits. Therefore, it was decided that the focus had to be different, and the approach ought to consider multiple parts of the complex problem of poverty. 

Because such interventions needed to be more focused in order to have this type of personal interaction, client selection was crucial to the success of the program. In most of the advertisements for microfinance institutions, a few clients that experienced tremendous results as advertised. However, not all clients experienced the same level of impact.

ECH’s program’s success grew, in part, from an accurate determination of which clients would likely benefit the most. ECH also required character references from each client’s neighbors, or a church or other nonprofit organization in one’s community. This helped to decrease substantially the level of information asymmetry between clients and the organization. Potential participants were also required to attend significant amounts of training before receiving loans, which helped to show the level of seriousness of the client. Based on ECH’s early, non-performing clients, the staff found that physical and emotional health affected the clients’ ability to manage a business. So ECH gradually introduced screening processes in order to determine if business failure due to a client’s health problems might become an issue. This was important, and coherent with the focus on a limited pool of participants. However, ECH could see early on that some microentrepreneurs appeared to be prime candidates, but then performed poorly. It was finally determined that some client characteristics were difficult to measure prior to providing microenterprise loan capital. So, the staff ultimately determined it was not appropriate to devote so much effort to those who had not proven their ability as microcredit clients.

As the “Big Boys,” i.e. traditional banks, increasingly were entering the Peruvian microfinance market, they brought various services that ECH was not equipped to make: larger amounts of capital, more loans for the masses, and a host of additional products. It included everything from allowing the poor to have bank accounts, obtain credit cards, insurance benefits, loan guarantees, and more. While the author was critical of high interest rates charged for microloans, these additional benefits were helpful in bringing Peruvians, particularly rural people and peasants, into the nation’s economy. As large institutions grew, ECH began to seem less relevant. It had neither the financing, scale of operations, manpower or clout with the national Peruvian government to excel on a huge scale. Today it’s more of a humanitarian NGO than a microfinance provider. Overall, the above issues suggest the many questions and challenges of building a microfinance institution that can be successful over the long haul.

Criticisms of Eagle Condor

Wrapping up this case about Eagle Condor Humanitarian, we must mention there have been various ups and downs through the years. While the successes predominate, as described above, it needs to be mentioned that there have been some failures.

Among the many challenges ECH faced were a number of board and staff conflicts, both in the U.S. and in Peru. There were frequent intercultural clashes between the leading directors and staffers of the two countries. The “American Way” of doing business can be quite different from the management cultures of Latin American nations. Nonprofit management is no different. 

For example, after its founding board chair resigned following 9 years of exceptional leadership, his successor created multiple problems. Although he had lived and worked in Peru, he was an “important” Utah businessman, as he would say, and tried to run the nonprofit ECH like just another corporation. It led to initial skirmishes which then grew to mass warfare. He didn’t get along with several of the other board members and he continually fought with ECH managers working in Peru. Ultimately this became open conflict and some of the board resigned in protest. Next, my Peruvian student and ECH co-founder who had dedicated a decade to the organization in launching and running multiple programs, was fired. 

A second problem was that when things became difficult, the board decided to partner with another Peruvian NGO based in Utah, Southern Cross Humanitarian (SCH). Its founder had served on the original ECH board, and was well-known and liked by Eagle Condor’s key players. But Southern Cross went in a different direction, focusing on establishing orphanages and fully funding them in both Peru and Bolivia. Clearly there was a need to aid impoverished children, but securing sufficient funds might be problematic, at least according to me. After several years, SCH was running low on cash, so its founder proposed it be merged into Eagle Condor. Some of the board liked the idea. I argued that they were trying to do too many disparate things with no real laser-like focus for achieving excellence at one great goal. The merger occurred, but was a flop. Now there’s no Southern Cross because it ceased to operate, and ECH has been gravely weakened, at least it appears so to this author. 

Here’s another difficulty. ECH had also struggled through not just the typical challenges of a start-up, but doing so during natural disasters because of the fact that Peru has earthquakes, volcanoes, massive mudslides due to rain and snow storms, and more. Plus, added to these were national political upheavals, terrorism, economic crises, civil conflicts, and tight economic conditions. These all affected the success of ECH to varying degrees.

An additional major source of economic stress in Eagle Condor’s first decade was when the so-called Great Global Recession of 2008 occurred in which millions of people around the world lost jobs and salaries. It hammered nations everywhere, and with declining donations, ECH suffered a great deal. In fact, it was not unusual for nonprofits to have financial ups and downs, but it became especially difficult in hard economic times. Now again, in 2020-21, ECH has struggled with the devastation of the Coronavirus pandemic. During the past 14 months, it hasn’t been possible to enjoy the typical levels of financial contributions from previous years because so many people were unemployed, and in some cases, even their homes were lost. Even worse were those falling victim to the devastating illness or death from COVID-19 [16].

One of ECH’s unsuccessful ventures occurred when its U.S. board and staff decided the organization could not only continue to succeed doing microfinance in South America, but that it should launch a similar program in Salt Lake City, Utah where it was based. So, plans were laid to begin doing microenterprise training and microlending in the surrounding area. I, among others, argued it would be difficult for multiple reasons.  This author had earlier founded and was operating a domestic NGO, MicroBusiness Mentors, with some of my students and donors serving Latino immigrants and refugees in Provo, Utah where my university is based. I knew it was tough to do this, and so I suggested ECH would face even more difficulties attempting such a program in Salt Lake City. My criticism was that it would become bifurcated, trying to “serve two masters,” as can be read in the Bible. By that time there were hundreds of domestic microlending programs throughout the United States, but the market was very different from giving tiny loans to indigenous villagers in Peru. However, ECH’s managers went on to attempt such a program anyway. Unfortunately, they pulled out after two years of absolute failure. They learned the hard way that microlending in large urban U.S. cities is very different from rural Peru. In the process, ECH lost significant amounts of money in its failed attempt. 

There have been numerous other problems at Eagle Condor Humanitarian over its nearly two decades, but the above is a few of the main difficulties.

Help Them Help Themselves

From its inception in 2003, Eagle Condor became a small, but important, player in the rolling out of grassroots rural microfinance efforts in Peru, especially among those working independent from the government and the nation’s large financial sector. Over time, along with a growing number of other institutions, whether NGOs initially, or the larger banks in recent years, Peru has become one of the hottest countries engaged in financial inclusion for the “poorest of the poor.” Perhaps the words of Enrique Iglesias [17], President of the Inter-American Development Bank, are a fitting conclusion to this case. In his firm’s newsletter, he reflected on the struggles of Latin America’s poor and the need for financing the poor in order to aid “the people with the untapped capacity to create the millions of businesses and millions of jobs we need to overcome poverty. Let’s help them help themselves. This type of help isn’t charity; it is an investment in dignity.”

1. Eagle Condor Prophecy. https://www.eaglecondor.org/what-we-do1#:. Accessed: September 9, 2020.

2. Eagle Condor Humanitarian. Internal documents including board minutes, staff notes, emails and more (unpublished materials), 2003–2017.

3. Marriott School, BYU. https://marriottschool.byu.edu/. Accessed: February 12, 2021.

4. Whyte, W.F. "Social inventions for solving human problems." American Sociological Review, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 1–13, 1982.

5. Brau, J. and W. Woodworth. Financing for Social Enterprise: Third World Impact Strategies for ‘Necessity Entrepreneurs.’ Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings 2014 (1): pp. 16605–16605. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2014. Accessed: October 2, 2020.

6. Hatch, J.K. Innovations from the Field. Ed. Sam Daley-Harris. Kumarian Press, 2002.

7. Woodworth, W.P. "Third world economic empowerment in the new millennium: Microenterprise, microentrepreneurship, and microfinance." SAM Advanced Management Journal, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 19–28, 2000.

8. Yunus, M. Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. Public Affairs, 2008.

9. ECH Report. Unpublished microfinance evaluation, 2006.

10. Caritas. https://www.caritas.org/where-caritas-work/latin-america/peru/. Accessed: November 4, 2020.

11. Parodi, C. Peru: 1960–2000. CIUP, 2000.

12. World Bank. Peru. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/peru/overview. Accessed: February 26, 2021.

13. CIA. World Factbook: Peru. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ml.html. Accessed: April 3, 2020.

14. Cespedes, T. and M. Taj. "Peru poverty rate rises for first time in 16 years: Government." Reuters, April 2018.

15. Rawhouser, H. and W. Woodworth. "Microfinance innovation and standardization in Peru." Western Social Science Association Conference Paper, Phoenix, Arizona, April 19–22, 2006.

16. Worldometer. Coronavirus Statistics Today. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. Accessed: January 30, 2021.

17. Iglesias, E.V. "Intel was once a start-up: Why Latin America’s microentrepreneurs deserve more attention—and assistance." IDB America, pp. 2, September 2005.