Our Mission and Vision
We are ESKALA and we welcome you to join our movement. We believe every person is worth investment, and everyone has the potential to be an entrepreneur, regardless of their background or resources. That’s why we provide microfinance services to entrepreneurs in rural areas of low-income that have difficulties getting support from financial institutions. We believe that by supporting entrepreneurship, we can help to create a more prosperous future for these communities.
Our Mission
To harness the power of investment to catalyze local cooperatives fostering economic growth in financially excluded populations.
Our Vision
Microequity for millons. Empowering aspiring business leaders with the investment capital and capacity to thrive in emerging economies.
Our Values
Community / Solidaridad
We all work together in partnership, from the ground
up, leveraging strengths and opportunities to maximize
return on our investments in each community.
Trust / Confianza
There has to be mutual trust for this to work: trust from
the community that we will do right by them; and trust
from us that they will do good by their word.
Entrepreneurship / Emprendedurismo
There is a strong bias for action. Innovation and
moderate risk-taking are valued. We approach each
opportunity with a grittiness and determination that is
unique to our culture.
Belief Statement
There are nearly 8 billion people on this planet. That’s nearly 8 billion completely unique sets of circumstances to be born into. Some come with an immense amount of opportunity, others with hardship most of us will never understand. Some lucky number of us are told of our unlimited potential from the moment we’re born, while others are born into a system that categorizes them as being worth … less. It’s not true. Across this planet, human potential is evenly distributed—but opportunity is not.
At ESKALA, we believe every person is worth investment, and our purpose is to create opportunity with every person to realize their potential; every person who has a great entrepreneurial plan but lacks the collateral and credit history to be considered for a loan through a traditional bank. With the hardworking parents who want to send their child to school. With the single mother who wants to open her own business and her daughter who will one daywork there, too. With the young woman who just needs someone to show her what she’s capable of achieving; the young son who sees his dad giving his all and says, “I want to be just like him.”
Our work—breaking the cycle of generational poverty by creating and investing in locally owned banking cooperatives in emerging economies—is rooted in partnership, in working together with trusted and trusting communities. But it’s not just a matter of financial investment. We invest with time, energy, access, education, care, resources, knowledge. Our goal is to empower the heroes of our story: local leaders who in turn bring opportunities to their community members. We work at the local level, from the ground up, to help these heroes—individuals with a dream and a goal—become aware of the potential they have and to equip them with the tools they need for their climb to financial freedom. By championing entrepreneurial spirit in partnership with entrepreneurs, we can boost economic development in rural communities, create wealth where wealth is deserved, show the next generation possibility (and their part in it), and prove to each and every individual that they are worth investment.