John K. Hatch
FINCA International
“Corporate Involvement”

View Presentation Slides
View Presentation Handout
View Presentation Handout (2)

Biography:

I was born November 7, 1940 in Pullman, Washington. From both my parents I inherited a strong predisposition for overseas adventuring. My father, a college professor who had led botanical expeditions to the Tropics, could trace his ancestors back 12 generations to the first Pilgrim baby born in the New World. My mother, born in Costa Rica, had ancestors which included an authentic conquistador, a railway-builder, and a co-founder of Panamerican World Airlines. My favorite book as a child-containing hundreds of pen-and-ink illustrations glorifying the Aztec civilization-was The Conquest of Mexico by the blind Yale scholar Andrew Prescott.

After high school in Massachusetts and a BA in History from Johns Hopkins University, in July 1962 I joined the Peace Corps for a marvelous 2-year stint in Colombia. Trained as a "community development" volunteer, I was assigned to a semi-urban barrio known as Hoyo Sapo ("Frog Hole") on the outskirts of the now-drug ravaged city of Medellin. I helped organize my neighbors to construct sewer lines, streets, a community center, library, soccer field, and a footbridge. Here I also became fluent in Spanish, god-fathered several kids, fell in love with Latin culture, and was first exposed to severe poverty, infant malnutrition, and illiteracy. Little did I realize at the time that I had just embarked on a career of service to the world's poorest families that would continue uninterrupted for the next four decades of my life.

Following my duty tour in Colombia I briefly served as an instructor in two Peace Corps training programs. Then, in early 1965 I was recruited as a regional Peace Corps director for Peru. Over the next 30 months I supervised some 55 volunteers working in agricultural cooperatives and credit unions serving the poorest. I returned home for graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, obtaining an MA in Economic History (1970) and a PhD in Economic Development (1973). In between (1970-71) a Fulbright grant allowed me to spend two crop cycles as a hired labor to 30 peasant farmers in Peru, documenting the power and wisdom of their traditional farming practices. The experience taught me deep respect for the subsistence skills of the poor. For the next 12 years I worked as a consultant in the design, management, and evaluation of mostly agricultural projects seeking to benefit the poor, eventually completing over 55 assignments in 28 countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Sadly, I found myself documenting dozens of foreign assistance failures that came closer to destroying than assisting their intended beneficiaries. I longed to create an organization that would allow the poor themselves-not bureaucrats, consultants, or other outsiders-to manage their own development initiatives. Meanwhile the human family was losing 14 million children each year to chronic malnutrition and hunger-related disease-the victims of severe poverty.

In 1984 I finally created my own nonprofit agency-the Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA). Its purpose was to provide the poorest families, particularly those headed by single-mothers, with loans to finance self-employment activities capable of generating additional household income. The means to achieving this purpose were "village banks", a self-managed support group of some 25 borrower-owners. The story of FINCA-which has been called a "World Bank for the Poor" and a "poverty vaccine for the planet"-is quite remarkable and even miraculous. To do this story justice will require a novel and a screenplay, both of which I plan to write once I retire. Suffice it to say FINCA currently operates village banking programs in 22 countries. Since 1984 it has assisted over 600,000 families, and last year lent over $129 million to the world's poorest families with a repayment rate of 97% while also generating enough income to completely cover the operating costs of the field programs themselves. Moreover, FINCA's methods have been imitated by at least 40 other nonprofit agencies, that have launched an additional 105 village banking programs that have collectively reached another 2 million families worldwide.

Of course, our work is far from done. Yet considering current growth trends, I know that by the time I retire over 100 million households worldwide will have been benefited by the poverty vaccine of microfinance and/or village banking . What I also know is that my grandchildren will inherit a world where severe poverty has been abolished.