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.