Pro Mujer/Bolivia

Countdown: How did Pro Mujer start? Whose idea was it and what was the activity before Pro Mujer?

I was working in El Alto in 1984 as a consultant with women involved in using methodologies to develop training and intervention materials for their children, lives, and families. They were all food recipients through either food for work programs or just recipients of donated food for mothers’ clubs. In 1990 these programs stopped. All the women were at a loss, trying to figure out what they could do. Since they were in groups, (they joined these food program groups for a long time), they didn’t know where to find answers to their needs. They began to search for different sources of help. They came to us looking for an answer and together with a friend, Lynne Patterson, we listened to them. With their ideas and hopes, we began to develop intervention programs.

We developed training materials and began to give the women training sessions according to their needs. Clearly the first thing that they asked for was training. The only thing that they knew they could be trained in was health—being mothers and having given support to their families—but they did not think about their own health. We began to work a lot in self-esteem and empowerment as well as how to fulfill the family’s needs and also their own needs. For about two years they participated in very active training sessions in order to implement what they learned in their families and in their lives. Of course they reached the point when they began to say, “okay, now we know how to take care of our health, our nutrition, our children’s education and early childhood stimulation, but we need resources to be able to do it.”

We began in 1993 to search for sources and methodologies in order to give them access to credit. They were very poor. Some of them were doing income-generating activities, but they were losing money because they didn’t know how to do it. First we began giving them training on how to begin a business. Then, we found that a better way to put this knowledge into practice was by giving them credit. Near the end of 1993, we began giving them small loans. But we didn’t have a very clear methodology.

Countdown: And how much at first, was it $20, or $50?

Fifty, the average loan was $50. At that point, 2,000 women, more or less, were linked to the program. It was in El Alto, an urban place, around La Paz. It has 10% growth per annum. It grows because all the people from the rural areas and other cities come and settle there and work in La Paz. It’s a very poor area.

We began with these groups. The methodology that we were using was not very refined and was not very clear. We were not working very efficiently. We didn’t have clarity on the sustainability issue. We were trying different things in order to see which one worked best and better answered the needs of the population with whom we were working. In 1994 we visited Grameen in Bangladesh. We learned a lot from them. We came back and decided to refine the methodology to make it more efficient. As an institution, we knew that we had to become sustainable in a short span of time so that our clients could count on us on a permanent basis and be able to perform better at their business and in all aspects of their lives. We defined the time cycles in which we were going to give credit. After talking with them, we decided the interest should come back to Pro Mujer and not to the clients as we were doing. We began our strategic plan to show how we could grow and operate in a more efficient way towards sustainability as an institution.

Then we began to expand our operations, not only in El Alto, but also in three other cities—always in the peri-urban area where the population was very poor and had no access to any kind of services. We included different adjustments to the methodology to make it more client-friendly and more efficient for the institution. At the beginning, each credit official was handling a couple of hundred people. Now they each are handling 1,500. We have seen enormous changes in the way the institution handles the program and in client satisfaction. Clients are receiving better service.

Countdown: Talk briefly about your methodology, specifically about group formation and how you operate the methodology.

At the beginning, the groups were formed as mothers’ clubs. Since these groups were already formed, we thought that the best way was to respect them and use them in order to provide clients with this service. The better way was adapting the village banking methodology. Now we gather these groups of an average of thirty women, and they go to places where Pro Mujer rents. They go once a week or twice every month to receive credit and training. Our methodology is very linked with additional services: training, health services, and other services that women might demand. It’s feasible for us to offer them in a very efficient and cost effective way.

Countdown: What would be an insight for another program that provides financial services and would like to get into this area, but fears the inclusion of health and other services would have a very negative impact on their efficiency? How it can be done in a cost effective way?

One should be very cautious in doing it because you can spread your institution so thin, doing so many things, that it’s dangerous. One of the things that we have learned is to separate, not only the accounting of each program, but also the responsibilities assigned to the person, or to the human resources. They have to be appointed with specific teams, with specific people that are doing specific things, and not all of them doing everything. That’s one of the things that will keep your institution operating in a very efficient way. I am absolutely aware that it would be easier for the institution to provide only financial services. But, due to the kind of people we are working with, [these other services] help our clients to overcome the exclusion in which they are living. They are very poor. They do not have easy access and do not know how to benefit from all the services that are in the field; we need to push them to have full advantage of the services to which they are entitled. We have found that a lot of the arrears were because the client had a very bad health condition. Any small sickness of their children or themselves was preventing them from going on with their business and of course they were not able to repay their loans.

We began a self-financing scheme in health a year ago, where clients are charged $0.50 a month from their savings and with that they have access to a doctor in each region and a nurse in each site where they meet. They have basic health services for them and their children. We have seen that with this small amount of money we can be self-sustainable in this health service.

Countdown: Would that be $0.50 a month per client?

Fifty cents per month per client.

Countdown: The nurse in one group would see thirty women and/or their family members and/or their children?

Each nurse covers a population of an average of 1,500 clients and their children. Of these clients, only a small percentage will require health assistance so the nurse can provide the service. When the nurse detects something that she cannot solve, she refers the patient to the doctor.

Something important to understand is that Pro Mujer has found, in order to be more efficient and to be able to give the services to the clients [such as] training and technical assistance, the clients need to meet in focal centers. For instance in El Alto, where the population is not so dispersed as in the rural area, we rent a focal center. It is a house that has three or four meeting rooms, and we gather in this focal center an average of 1,200 women that meet regularly within a month. Every week, or every other week, they come to the center. In this facility, we have a permanent nurse who will check the health of all the women that come and need health attention and the children whenever the mother wants the children to be checked. If the nurse finds that something is not going well with their health, she sends them to the doctor who has been hired full-time for the institution. They send the woman or the children to the doctor, or the doctor comes to the health facility that we have in each focal center. We have found that health indicators have improved.

For instance, the percentage of children that have received vaccination in this last year has increased enormously. It is not that they do not have health services in the community, they do, but they do not trust [them and] do not have the time. They do not know the importance of having the children vaccinated. I could give you numbers. I am sure that in the last report that we sent, they went up 30%.

For instance, family planning. Now that is a big issue here in Bolivia. They do want to have a family planning facility and have control over the number of children that they have, but they don’t dare go to the clinic, because its showing themselves into a clinic where they do not want to be seen or whatever. But since this service is given in a specific spot where they are used to going, where everybody is their friend, they don’t feel frightened. They are using family planning methods more openly.

Countdown: Great, let’s go to the Action Plan specifically. I want to look at it through the lens of the Microcredit Summit’s core themes—reaching the poorest, reaching and empowering women, building financially self-sufficient institutions, and ensuring a positive, measurable impact on the lives of clients and their families. It seems so obvious that the history of Pro Mujer comes from the empowerment of women. You would consider that one of the strengths of Pro Mujer, I would guess.

Definitely, because we have not only seen the changes, but we have proved them by impact evaluations. We did apply the AIMS tools, in two sites, in El Alto and in Cochabamba. In both the changes in life skills and conditions and the level of woman empowerment were absolutely clear.

Countdown: Was it one of those simpler tools of AIMS? Did you do it with a test group, a sample group of 50 women?

We did it with a sample group in both places. We applied the five instruments. We used a focal group. The results were impressive. What is worth mentioning is that the results did not show a 100% change. The changes were small but they were consistent—all areas that they were tested showed improvement.

Countdown: Is that a small percentage of change over one year?

We used three groups, one that was new to the program, another that had been with the program two years, and another that was four years old. We could see the changes in time. It was clear that the group that was in the institution for four years showed a better profile than the ones that were beginning in all areas of their lives.

Countdown: Do you see yourself using AIMS tools in the future, or do you see a need to, in some sense, simplify them further in order to use them?

We now have an Action Plan for this specific issue. In El Alto, we applied the AIMS tools with adjustments to our culture, our language and small details; but we did apply them pretty much the same as they are. For Cochabamba, we used them for a very specific need so we shortened them. We found out that even though they were shortened, they were valuable and gave us a lot of information. We are planning to apply this new version, the shorter one, consistently every two or three years. One of Pro Mujer’s strengths is that we have learned to listen to our clients. The AIMS tool is one of the best ways to listen to our clients.

¹.  Very poor in developing countries refers to families whose income is in the bottom 50 percent of the population living below their countries poverty line.

For more information, contact Carmen Velasco by e-mail at cvelasco@promujer.org or by fax at 591.2.78411