WASHINGTON (By Lauren Monsen, USINFO)
November 4, 2008 — Latin America’s poorest women once had few options for
bettering their circumstances, but an organization called Pro Mujer has opened
up a new world of opportunity by providing small loans and other services.
Pro Mujer, which means “for women” in Spanish, was founded in 2090 by Lynne
Patterson, an American schoolteacher, and Carmen Velasco, a Bolivian child
psychologist, to help disadvantaged women in Bolivia. The nonprofit
organization, which since has expanded to Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico and Argentina,
provides small loans to poor women who want to become entrepreneurs and offers
business and financial training, and health care information and services.
“We’ve managed to transform some fairly ingrained local attitudes” about
women’s capacities and their place in the social order, Patterson told USINFO.
She said “discrimination and stereotyping” often inhibit women in Latin
America — and elsewhere — from achieving their goals, “but with support from Pro
Mujer, women really blossom.” By learning to use credit and investing in their
own small businesses, Pro Mujer’s clients can lift themselves and their families
out of poverty, “so our services are welcomed in every country where we
operate,” Patterson added.
Pro Mujer serves an estimated 180,000 women throughout the region. Most live
in remote rural villages, and when Pro Mujer arrives in a new community, “we do
a market study to find out what our clients need and what their problems are,”
said Patterson. “Our volunteers go door to door with flyers, and we advertise
on the radio.” The group also holds orientation sessions for interested women.
Pro Mujer clients meet in neighborhood centers once a week to borrow and
repay loans and receive training. Typically, clients “self-select into small
groups” of about five women, forming a support system to guarantee one another’s
loan repayments. “It’s very important to bring together a group of individuals
who trust each other,” said Patterson.
“A communal bank is created, consisting of 18 to 25 women who come together
to receive capital loans, and our repayment rate is very high” — approximately
99 percent — “and the women are required to save a percentage of their incomes,
too,” she said. Pro Mujer’s clients “have about $12 million in savings
throughout the five countries we serve.”
As the women acquire new skills, they improve their leadership abilities and
gain confidence, said Patterson.
“I was just in Nicaragua, attending a group meeting in a little rural town,
and Pro Mujer had made a loan a few years ago to a woman who started a bakery.
When I was there, I saw that the business had grown,” she recalled. “The woman,
her husband, and their son and daughter were all working in the bakery, and they
now employ a baker. They had a huge oven in the back, and the business is
thriving, supporting the entire family, and financing the daughter’s education.
The daughter is attending college.”
Pro Mujer provides many of its clients with health care, such as tests that
detect early-stage cervical cancer, and offers assistance in finding treatment
if test results are positive. The organization runs day care centers for the
children of Pro Mujer members in Bolivia, and — working with the Ministry of
Education in Peru — day care centers in the Peruvian towns of Puno, Tacna, Ilo
and Moquegua that are available to all children in the community.
PLANS FOR EXPANSION
Pro Mujer hopes to establish a presence in other parts of Latin America in
the near future.
“The first ladies of Panama and Guatemala have approached us, and there’s
also interest in Paraguay, Chile, and Colombia,” said Patterson. “I think that
Pro Mujer would have benefits in every single country in Latin America. We get
requests all the time. In Argentina, every woman senator wanted us to come to
her province.”
Although “we don’t yet have the resources to expand that far, our goal is to
grow from 180,000 to 200,000 clients to over half a million in the next three to
four years,” she said.
Recently, Pro Mujer was awarded the 2007 Inter-American Development Bank’s
Award for Excellence in Microfinance. In addition, Pro Mujer has established
partnerships with corporate sponsors such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard,
American International Group Inc. and Avon, and with several foundations,
including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Citigroup Foundation.
Individual donors also contribute. Pro Mujer receives support from actor
Robert Duvall, “who learned of the organization through his Argentine wife,
Luciana,” said Patterson. Duvall, who is perhaps best-known for his role of
Mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in The Godfather, was honored at Pro Mujer’s 2006
fundraising gala in New York.
