Andrew Mahon

During a workshop with our Ugandan partner, Andrew Mahon and other PEER Servants volunteers conducted a “Microfinance 101” course put together by the United Nations. One of the ‘gimme’ questions was “is it safe to lend money to the poor?” The answer was quite obviously ‘yes,’ since the rest of the entire course was about lending to the materially poor. One very experienced Ugandan loan officer, Jimmy, immediately and knowingly declared that the answer was ‘no,’ it is not safe, since poor people don’t pay back and have bad financial habits. After some back and forth, Andrew notes: “It became clear that our Ugandan microfinance partner’s clients, who I saw as poor, were not poor at all in the loan officer’s eyes. They were hard working, upright, energetic people intent on providing for themselves and their families. Jimmy allowed me to begin to see the clients as people of dignity and worth, as Christ sees them, and not just ‘the poor.'”