About Adelante Foundation
We are a nonprofit organization with a 22 year history of success that believes in the power of opportunity. Our work is based on the assumption that Hondurans living in poverty have the talent, the ingenuity, and the strength to transform their lives and their nation — all that many of them need is a little capital to be able to get started.
Test your knowledge and learn why we do this work.
Our Mission
To empower enterprising women with the least opportunity to achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Our Vision
Our vision is a world without poverty.
Our Values
Our core values are unity, discipline, hard work, and courage.
History
“Adelante” is the Spanish word for “forward,” to reflect forward mobility and economic independence. We are a nonprofit organization with over 20 years success improving lives of impoverished women and their families though provision of opportunities. Adelante offers micro loans, education, and financial services to women who otherwise lack access to funding. The end goal is to empower, cultivate entrepreneurship, and break intergenerational cycles of poverty.
Hurricane Mitch hit the Caribbean, tearing through Honduras in the fall of 1998. Adelante Foundation Founder, Tony Stone, grew up in the country and watched the footage with horror. Pieces of homes and businesses from his childhood neighborhood swept down the flooded streets. He felt compelled to act. After extensive research on sustainable poverty alleviation, he and a group of Hondurans settled on microfinance. They found lending money rather than giving it away fosters economic development and beneficiaries retain dignity versus developing dependence. With the support of venture capitalist and philanthropist Ed Cohen, Adelante Foundation was born and shortly thereafter secured status as a Grameen Bank Replicator. Although there are several micro lending organizations now working in Honduras, Adelante continues to be one of the only microfinance nonprofits that prioritizes the very poor.
Empowerment
Microfinance is not charity – it empowers people to make positive changes in their own lives. Entrepreneurs develop a sense of personal ownership towards the goals that they are able to accomplish thanks to the success of their small businesses. This has a ripple effect: one woman inspires others with the confidence to take charge of their lives. A mother’s success gives her children a new outlook on life, thus breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty.