Tim Ekas, a 1999 Knoch High School graduate, is now an investment and insurance adviser for New York Life/Eagle Strategies of Saxonburg. But in the past, his financial sphere was less high finance and more concerned with goats, chickens and cloth.

Ekas, who lives in Oakmont, grew up in Saxonburg, the son of Rich and Arlene Ekas. He graduated from Clarion University in 2003 with a degree in English.

“In college I didn't know what I was going to do,” he said.

But “a financial planner in Mars took me out on a couple of appointments,” Ekas said, and he discovered he liked the finance industry.

After earning his securities and insurance licenses, Ekas moved to Chicago in 2011 where he was employed by a bank before going to work for a small faith-based nonprofit group, Bright Hope, a charity based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., which makes small loans in eight third-world countries including Haiti. He worked for Bright Hope from May 2012 through November 2013.

Between May and October 2013 he made three trips to Haiti.

“In Haiti, we focused on microloans,” said Ekas. “We had $220,000 in capital that we let out in loans of as little as $25. Keep in mind, these are people living in extreme poverty. Once they repay that loan they get a $50 loan, then a $75 loan and upward to a maximum of $250.”

Bright Hope says its mission is to bring hope to those living on less than $1 a day. It aims to do this through the village churches.

“The church is the hub of the community. Church leaders know everything that is going on,” Ekas said.

“We work together to determine/identify the villages that already have strong leadership and are looking for ways to lift themselves out of poverty,” said Lindsey Zarob, Bright Hope's director of marketing and communications.

Initiatives that Bright Hope encourages include: feeding the hungry, supplying clean water, caring for orphans, medical assistance and disaster response, as well as job creation, church training, and fighting human trafficking.

“Everything we did, we did through the local church and its infrastructure,” Ekas said.

In many areas, the church and the school were the same building. The villages may only contain 150 people, a business or two and a church.

The charity hopes to foster additional churches and then establish schools through them.

Helping Bright Hope achieve its goals is the microloan program that it's been using in Haiti for 10 years.

“The microloans are a way to try and stimulate some economic growth to pay for the kids to go to school and allow the schools to be sustainable,” said Ekas.

“The repayment rates were high, 80 plus percent,” he said. “What it allowed some of the recipients to do was work ahead, use that loan as business income. It allowed them to reborrow the money.”

Ekas said one of his tasks was help refine a spreadsheet program to keep track of loans and successful repayments.

One reason the repayment rate is so high, said Ekas, is recipients are teamed with other recipients, who meet in small groups of four or five.

“It was kind of a peer-to-peer thing. It added an extra layer of accountability,” he said. “It's meant to encourage peer pressure to repay loans.”

“Given the circumstances, for people that live in poverty, there has to be some hope,” said Ekas.

Women would use the money to buy cloth in the capital of Port au Prince in larger quantities at a better price and bring it back to their villages to sell at a profit, Ekas said.

Many of the Haitian men made a living by trading goats. They would use the loans to buy the animals and fatten them up for resale.

Ekas said one goat trader, a blind man named Delvacine, was afraid of being robbed of cash, so he would convert his loans to goats immediately.

Ekas would travel out in the rural landscape to meet with loan recipients and actually hand out the cash.

“It was a hike to get to some of them,” he said.

“The plateau is kind of barren,” said Ekas. “The striking thing about it, especially in the rural areas were the roads, they were just insanely bad.”

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island and Ekas said, thanks to a reforesting project, “it's lush and green on the Dominican Republic side. Deforestation is a huge problem in Haiti. They've really stripped the resources bare.”

Bright Hope has begun a new initiative, outfitting shipping containers for use as churches and schools and sending them to Haiti.

Zarob said, “The purpose of the Jelly (Jesus Education Loans Love and You) is to connect families in the United States with families in Haiti. We take two shipping containers and the families work to fill those up with whatever the community needs to equip their school and get the building up and running.”

“They're painted in Chicago, fitted with drywall inside and packed with supplies. Connect the containers with concrete blocks and put a tin roof on and you've got a church and a school,” Ekas said.