Micro-Loans, Macro-Impact
With the assistance of Oxfam partner ASETECO (Technical Assessment to Oaxacan Communities), hundreds of rural women in this economically depressed region are playing a valuable role in their families and communities.
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| The oldest member of an ASETECO-supported cooperative pressing the powders of cinnamon, chocolate, almonds and sugar into bars that will later be cooled and sown. By: Betsy Rakocy/Oxfam |
Poor health, education, and housing standards are the realities that confront the majority of women living in the rural and suburban areas of Oaxaca, Mexico. In the face of these impoverished conditions, many men migrate to the United States and northern Mexico to seek work, leaving women to assume additional burdens at home.
In indigenous communities and suburban shantytowns, women are already responsible for the education of their children and providing for the basic needs of their household. In the communities where ASETECO works, more than 70 percent of women are illiterate. Oaxacan women are rarely able to access loans, a reality which contributes heavily to the abysmal conditions of poverty and food shortages in rural Mexico.
In the rural areas of Oaxaca, there is a great shortage of appropriate, timely, and accessible lending services. For people with scare resources, access to bank loans is restricted by a number of nearly insurmountable obstacles. In rural areas, the situation is even more critical, because loan applications and opening of bank accounts require an individual guarantee, such as property. Moreover, the loan and savings services provided by banks are not suitable to function in indigenous communities in which almost every aspect of their social, economic and culture life functions collectively. This lack of access to loan and savings services is also due to the dependency on governmental programs of investment for development, which for years have contributed to high poverty levels in rural Mexico.
In Oaxaca, The Women's Training Center (CECAMO), a branch of ASETECO, operates savings and loans centers. The centers are managed by community women, providing small loans to women who would not normally have access to credit.
ASETECO works in three communities in Mexico:
Total population: 7618 inhabitants (3743 men, 3875 women)
Age distribution: 42 percent of the population is less than 15 years old, and only 4 percent are more than 65 years old
Education levels: 2,828 of the inhabitants older than 15 can read and write, leaving 1,352 people that are illiterate. Only 32 percent of the population older than 15 years old have completed their primary education.
Women make up 71 percent of the illiterate population.
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| A plaque identifying an ASETECO-supported chocolate factory. Translation: Yúvila Chocolate. Organized Group of Women Producers of Chocolate and Other Products from the Countryside. By: Betsy Rakocy/Oxfam |
This type of empowerment is serving to break cultural and economic barriers, and providing money for women to improve their communities through a variety of innovative projects, from organic vegetable production to housing repair. ASETECO also provides training on the management of loans and savings, including basic accounting, planning, and micro-enterprise development.
One of ASETECO's micro-loan programs assists a group of women in producing palm leaf furniture, which has been picked up by an Italian furniture company in Mexico. Women involved with the credit group are also growing vegetables, building latrines, and constructing stoves to reduce smoke inhalation. In the last year, other new family businesses have blossomed with the support of Oxfam, including a bakery and a cooperative chicken slaughterhouse. More than 100 women in three communities have benefited from this project, which is now being replicated in other communities.