2024 Lydia Award Stories
Meet Our 2024 Finalists
In the spirit of Lydia, PEER Servants sponsors the Annual Lydia Award. It recognizes those micro-entrepreneurs having significant impact in their families and communities. Read the stories of this year’s three finalists below.
Through the voting of our Lydia Award Committee, the online voting, and the voting among those who attend our Virtual Lydia Celebration and Lydia Celebration Banquet, we selected Judith from Uganda as our 2024 Lydia Award recipient. Congratulations, Judith and CAFECC (PEER Servants Ugandan microfinance partner) and to the other two Finalists!
Join us in thanking God for the transformation in the lives of these hardworking micro-entrepreneurs and, through them, the lives of many others.
Carmelina
Restaurant
Owner
Guatemala
Carmelina’s life has been anything but easy. She had to forego her education and start working in her native Guatemala at the age of nine. She was married at the age of eleven. After suffering years of abuse from her husband, she left him with the goal of working and saving money to provide a better future for her four children. Today she owns a small restaurant and a food stall in Zone 3 bordering the largest landfill in Central America.
Carmelina started getting loans through PEER Servants’ partner, Potter’s House. Through her first loan of just over $130, she opened an informal food stall and gradually increased her clientele. Potter’s House was impressed with her hard work and quality product and supported her business growth through 18 loans totaling over $12,000. This enabled her to open a small restaurant in a commercial location where she sells lunch and dinner items. Her customers love her product. Even Coke and Pepsi were impressed and gave her a refrigerated means of selling their products!
Through her hard work, Carmelina has been able to pay for the education of her children and grandchildren that she was never able to get. Always a learner, she learned to read at age 45. Always generous, she goes through the streets feeding homeless people dinner with the food she doesn’t sell in the restaurant. She also shares God’s Word and His hope with her neighbors. Many young neighbors now attend church and have jobs. She is also focused on helping her grandchildren succeed. One granddaughter works with her in the restaurant and hopes to study gastronomy!
Carmelina’s dream is to expand her restaurant and buy tables and chairs. She has already witnessed significant business growth – doubling her income and tripling her fixed assets. She is an overcomer and is being used by God to bless others in ways that are bringing the kingdom Near to those in her community.
Clarita
Agri-Business/Convenience Store Owner
Philippines
For years, Clarita supported her husband, a pastor, in his ministry to 18 churches in the mountains of their region in the Philippines. To support their family, her husband started a fruit farm and a small piggery. He managed most of the operations, leaving Clarita with very little knowledge of how to run the business. The couple provided shelter and education to five nieces and nephews, who all became professional teachers.
Clarita’s life changed drastically when her husband became bedridden due to cancer and died a year later, leaving her struggling to learn to manage the business as well as oversee the churches bereft of his leadership. CCT, PEER Servants’ partner in the Philippines, came to her aid by providing vital training, small loans, and weekly fellowship meetings that provided her with emotional and spiritual encouragement. Clarita found a way to move forward in life.
With time, Clarita’s business and her ministry not only survived, but flourished under the guidance from CCT. She took small loans of around $100 to expand her farm by growing new varieties of fruit trees. She opened a small neighborhood store. She began raising poultry. In all, Clarita received eleven loans from CCT. Most important to Clarita, however, have been her efforts to extend the kingdom of heaven to earth. The number of churches Clarita, who was also ordained, now oversees has risen to 22. Her piggery provides piglets to the church pastors in the mountains. Clarita serves the community by volunteering for feeding programs, medical missions, and assisting people with their businesses. Clarita leads people to Jesus.
Many members of Clarita’s extended family have decided to follow Jesus. All of her grandchildren graduated from the CCT Christian School. Her son aspires to become an ordained minister. Clarita prays that God will continue to enrich what she has, so that with the help she gives to others, the Good News will be preached and cultivated in the hearts of those who hear it.
Judith
Potter/Farmer/Food Supplements Distributor
Uganda
Judith grew up in a family with insufficient income for school fees, so she dropped out and started earning money so that her siblings could go to school. She decided to make and sell pottery. After being taught the craft by her aunt, she launched her business. Initially her monthly sales averaged $25 with a profit of $15. Within a few years, her sales and profits had quadrupled and she hired five workers to help her while training two others. Life was good.
Judith heard about CAFECC, PEER Servants’ Ugandan partner, and took advantage of the business training and savings program it offered. She got married and within five years had three beautiful children. Then tragedy struck – her husband abandoned her and the children. Being the sole family provider, she found it necessary to deplete her business capital to meet her family’s needs.
Judith remembered that CAFECC offered business loans in addition to their training and savings program. She applied for and received her first loan of $14 to revive her pottery business. Six subsequent loans allowed her to start two other businesses – farming and distributing food supplements. These businesses now employ ten people. Judith’s monthly profits have grown up to $150 – ten times that of her first business profits! Her children are in school, getting the education Judith was never able to get.
Before Judith was a client of CAFECC, she was not following Jesus. By engaging in CAFECC’s bi-weekly prayer meetings and monthly fellowship, she learned much more about Jesus and decided to become His follower. She now serves as the church secretary and her business success allows her to tithe to the church, support additional church needs, and be generous with others, especially the elderly. She offers pottery training to her neighbors, and organizes free health camps for the community. Judith and her children now live with dignity and are helping many others live with dignity as well.
