Mocksville pastor mixes passion with business to help the poor in Nicaragua help themselves

When he's not performing his pastoral duties, the Rev. Kevin Frack can be found helping villagers on the edge of the Nicaraguan rain forest learn how to start their own businesses.

He works with the Miskito Indians, an indigenous tribe that lives in the Atlantic coastal region of Nicaragua. The area was devastated by Hurricane Felix in 2007.

"These are some of the poorest people in the world," Frack said. "There's 95 percent unemployment. They are subsistence farmers by background who aren't subsisting well anymore."

Frack and five businessmen formed Terra Verde International, a United States company, in January to provide a business model in Nicaragua to generate jobs and provide Nicaraguans with training so that they can start their own businesses.

Terra Verde International is not a denominational or church venture.

"It's really Christian businessmen who see a need and instead of going to churches and asking for donations are investing of themselves to do the right thing for the right reasons in the same way that they would invest in a good thing here," Frack said.

Their goal is to turn Terra Verde into a profitable venture. Some of the company's profits would be used to pay back its original and potential investors and some would create a foundation or development fund.

"That development fund will then be seed money for us to teach villagers that we're working with how they can start their own businesses," Frack said. "The base of them starting their own business will be a model agroforestry farm that we're developing." Terra Verde International has started two portable sawmills and will sell rough-cut lumber that will be harvested from trees downed by Hurricane Felix.

Frack said that they are trying steer away from the region's "slash and burn" way of farming to a more managed practice, and will engage in reforestation to protect the environment.

"We're actually trying to work with the natural system and eventually plant more trees," he said.

Frack lives in Winston-Salem and is the pastor of Cornerstone Christian Church in Mocksville.

His business partners are John Bost of Clemmons, Michael Cheney of Oak Ridge, Jay Helvey of Winston-Salem, Robby Lee of Lewisville and Troy Smith of Raleigh.

Bost, the mayor of Clemmons and a commercial real-estate broker, and Lee, the owner of Master Counsel Technologies LLC in Lewisville, have known Frack for years and are familiar with his missionary work with the Miskito Indians.

P
eople who travel with mission teams often gain more benefit from their trips than the indigenous people, Bost said..

"We're trying to devise a model that's entrepreneurial that anyone can do as opposed to people trying to create the typical missionary model that comes from philanthropy from the church," he said.

Lee said that Terra Verde International has the opportunity to provide long-lasting benefits for the villagers.

"What they really need is something that will bring them out of the poverty for the long term, something that's sustainable," he said.

Terra Verde International came about when the Village of Sukatpin requested help in July 2008, Frack said.

The village leaders, who knew Frack from his agriculture and community development work for the Moravian Church in Nicaragua 30 years ago, needed help to simply survive.

"They said they knew how to do what they've always done, but it doesn't work anymore," Frack said.

In September 2008, the village leaders met with Frack, offering to lease 2,500 acres at no cost. Frack said he would provide action plans, expertise and training, and help create an infrastructure such as housing for workers, roads, transportation and setting up markets.

He showed the Miskitos how they could plant trees for lumber and citrus fruits and nuts for a long-term investment. The plan also called for teaching the villagers animal husbandry and how to raise their own food.

Since his meeting, the villages of Klingna and Gol Awala have asked to be part of the project . The three villages have a combined population of 5,000.

Terra Verde has 50 employees, of which 30 have such permanent jobs as machine operators, cooks, watchmen and animal handlers. The others are unskilled workers who rotate employment to give all families in the villages an opportunity to benefit from jobs and training.

"We're harvesting our own rice for the first time," said Frack, who speaks Spanish and the Miskito language.

He said that Wake Forest University's law school adopted Terra Verde International as one of its student graduate-level work projects. The law school helped with the company's incorporation in the United States, and is now completing an application to get nonprofit status for the development fund.

Frack, who typically travels to Nicaragua every six weeks, said that ultimately, the business partners want to turn their efforts in Nicaragua into a prototype of a business model that can be used throughout the world to help people "who feel overlooked or bypassed and who need hope for a sustainable future."

fdaniel@wsjournal.com


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