Our Borrowers
Featured Portfolio Stories
Roxbury Roots, Boston, MA
Roxbury Roots is the dream of its founder, Renee Jolley. Renee grew up in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury and wanted to bring the magic of Montessori education to her community. The program began as a parent-child initiative and home-based child care program. With loan capital from The Sunlight Loan Fund, Roxbury Roots was able to expand into a beautiful, community-embedded microschool in the heart of the Roxbury neighborhood. Today, Roxbury Roots is a thriving preschool, kept affordable through public child care subsidies, serving students 6-weeks to 6-years-old.
Cosmos Montessori, Minneapolis, MN
Cosmos Montessori, led by Laura Cefalu, is a thriving preschool and charter elementary school that used loan capital from The Sunlight Loan Fund to open in the Sabathani Community Center. Sabathani helps equip and support 32,000 local residents through a food bank, clothes shelf, seniors programming, an affordable housing development and workforce preparation program. Cosmos also partners with the local Seward Community Co-Op to provide nutritious, affordable, well-balanced meals for student sand teachers.
The Girasol School, Dorado, PR
In the sunny classrooms of The Girasol School in Dorado, Puerto Rico, English and Spanish flow naturally throughout the day. Girasol bridges Dorado’s complex demographic mix of local Puerto Rican families, returning diaspora members, and international newcomers. Their commitment to accessibility was intentional from the start - in a community where over half of the residents live in poverty, 50% of students receive subsidized tuition through their flexible model. The results speak for themselves: children naturally become each other’s language teachers, families find accessible support, and a community discovers new educational possibilities. Just as its namesake, the sunflower, naturally turns toward the sun as its source of life, Girasol turns toward belief in a brighter future for its community, drawing energy from hope to create authentic connections and greater opportunity across language, culture, and economic divides.
