The opening a cappella hymn from the tiny San Pedro and San Pablo church in the heart of a northside barrio in Santo Domingo breaks the silence of Sunday morning. The service begins at 7 a.m., just after the sun comes up and shortly before most of the worshippers stroll from their modest cinder block homes that sit within earshot of the service.
During his pre-worship ritual of setting prayer books on the wooden benches and decoupling plastic chairs for the expected overflow, Deacon Alex Romero explained that the service is scheduled between the pre-dawn roosters’ serenade and the stirring of a neighborhood awakening to blaring radios and the deafening rumble of motorcycle engines. Otherwise, the service in the tiny front room of a house, illuminated by a light bulb that dangles from a single wire, would be impossible to hear.
The Sunday morning worship also starts early because, as with most vicars and deacons in the Dominican Republic, the clergy conduct services in a number of places. Romero has a 9 a.m. service at San Felipe Church in a modest but more finely furnished neighborhood a short distance by car.
Since its founding 17 years ago, San Pedro and San Pablo has met in private homes. On March 8, the day of the Michigan delegation’s visit, the church broke ground for a new building and school a short walk away that will serve the densely packed and impoverished community where many people live at the edge of the Osama River.
“The people were so welcoming out of their poverty and so hospitable,” said Robert Gepert, bishop of Western Michigan. “I was really touched by their enthusiasm and their hope for the future and the building of a new church there.”
Life near the river has its perils. Not only are the people squatters with neither legal right to the property nor normal municipal services, when the river frequently rises, the wooden and tin dwellings are completely submerged by flood waters.
Life literally under the bridge is tenuous. The electrical wiring is strewn like spaghetti from pole to pole, drinking water must be purchased from a truck that passes along the dirt and rutted thoroughfare honking to proclaim its presence,
and the only choice to paying a fee for waste and trash removal is to let the river rinse it downstream.
Scattered among the modest housing are a handful of women who benefit from the program of La Iglesia Episcopal Dominicana (the Episcopal Church of the Dominican Republic) to provide micro-enterprise loans. Under the direction of Priest Milton Amparo, the director of planning and development program at the diocese, and supported by Five Talents International, the pilot project provides loans of between 1,000-7,000 pesos ($30-$200).
The pilot program in the Dominican Republic has provided loans to 134 families in the past nine months. Mostly granted to women in groups of at least five, the loans allow people to start small businesses like hair salons, bakeries or sewing and clothing cooperatives. While a single borrower signs for the loan, the support of a group insures shared responsibility for repayment and mutual accountability for the success of the endeavor, Amparo explained.
He also emphasized that by encouraging loans to women in the same church, the loan program is infused with a deeper spiritual element and helps develop a deeper sense of community.
In contrast to local bank interest rates of an exorbitant 50 percent, the church’s interest rate on a project development loan is 30 percent. While that also seems high, Amparo, who also serves as a priest at San Andres church in Santo Domingo, explained that it covers a 10 percent savings and reinvestment reserve, health insurance, transportation, and funds for employing people so that the businesses do not have to rely solely on volunteers. A prior development project of the church charged only 18 percent, but suffered from a lower repayment rate and lower sustainability rate. In its first year, the new project’s repayment rate is 100 percent.
Five Talents International is the Anglican Church-based agency that provides the seed money for the project in the Dominican Republic: $50,000 in 2008 and $60,000 in 2009.
“The main weapon we have to fight poverty is this kind of program,” Amparo said. “In nine months, if we can reach 134 families, we wonder how many can we reach in 10 years, and how many more areas outside of Santo Domingo.”
Detroit, MI
Since its founding 17 years ago, San Pedro and San Pablo has met in private homes. On March 8, the day of the Michigan delegation’s visit, the church broke ground for a new building and school a short walk away that will serve the densely packed and impoverished community where many people live at the edge of the Osama River.