Carola Conde Bonfil, Mexico

Promoting Microcredit for Women in Mexico

In a country where the majority of people don’t graduate from high school and scant few attend college, Carola Conde Bonfil of Mexico has achieved the highest levels of education: a Ph.D.

In her case, Carola said, it wasn’t hard to beat the odds. Her father, a bookkeeper, was college-educated and her mother, an executive secretary, supportive. The family lived in Mexico City, the capital and home to fully half of Mexico’s colleges and universities.

But for Mexicans who live in the country’s vast rural areas and small villages, a good education is harder to come by. Many rural areas offer primary education, but have no high school. And families often prefer to keep their daughters at home than to put them in school past the early years.

As a result, despite increased educational investment by the government, many Mexicans are stuck in a cycle of intense poverty.

Carola strives to help them lift themselves up. She works on, researches and writes about microfinancing, small loans that aim to enable poor people to start their own businesses. Carola also volunteers for Ámbito Productivo, a microfinancial organization that works in Mexico’s poorest areas.

Until recently, the organization helped people establish savings accounts, as most counties in Mexico have no banks. “So people need to save in objects – animals – not in monetary forms and not in institutions,” Carola said. But starting in 2007, the government prohibited nongovernmental organizations from serving as savings institutions, so Ámbito Productivo focuses on bestowing microcredit for specific projects. It also educates people about business, health and nutrition and gender issues.

“In many villages, the life is very hard because there are no commodities,” such as water or electricity, she said. Microcredit, she said, along with training in productivity and sales, can help spur economic activity.

In the world of microfinance, Carola said, institutions must deal with the financial wellbeing of entire families. Otherwise, they can create such problems as domestic violence and a lack of self-esteem among women. “The solution could be worse with microfinance if the program is not designed for gender,” she said.

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