Posted on July 22, 2010 - by M. Bennett

Attorney Duo Creates Microfinance Project to Aid Haitian Farmers…

Thomas Adcock

New York Law Journal     July 22, 2010

Ralph Delouis and R. Andrew Richards scarcely knew one another at the New York offices of McCarter & English before their June mission to Haiti, which had been ravaged by the aftermath of January’s earthquake. But what they had in common was personal experience in how random disaster may alter and upend everyday life. And each knew that their own well-being carried with it a debt to others.

They paid back in the way that lawyers can: with pro bono service, namely by creating a microfinance institution that will help make ends meet for as many as 5,000 subsistence farmers in Haiti.

During a week-long stay in Port-au-Prince, Richards and Delouis filed a business charter with the Haitian financial ministry that enabled their client, an alliance of nonprofit financial groups, to begin extending critical loans to small-scale farmers affected by the earthquake.

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