An interview with Lynne Patterson, co-founder of Pro Mujer, an organization that has linked microcredit loans with health services, education, and training for women for nearly 20 years.
 | Lynne Patterson, co-founder & executive director, Pro Mujer"Your income can go up, but if you're not taking care of your health, you're in jeopardy." |
Pro Mujer provided health and education services even before it started giving out loans. Why did health services come before microfinance?
We say we are a women's development and microfinance organization, but the women's development comes first. Microfinance is a service delivery system for other services clients need. For example, health services. Your income can go up, but if you're not taking care of your health, you're in jeopardy. Our experience in country after country is that women don't go to the doctor. They don't spend money on themselves, unless they need emergency care, and then it's often too late.
Village banking is the ideal vehicle for ongoing training and education of women. The women come in groups of 25-30 every week, and you can provide a lot of education along with the loan. Empowerment, health education, and child development were our original interests. Credit was an afterthought that resulted from the women telling us what they needed.
How does Pro Mujer make health services financially sustainable?
It's a question we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out. We have two sources of income for health education and health services. One is fees for services. Nothing is free; nothing should be free. Of course, the fees are not going to cover the whole amount. We subsidize this with retained earnings. In the past, we've gotten grants health education and services, but as long as you're subsidizing something with grants, it's not a sure thing.
We need to apply the very same discipline to the health services and education side as we do to the financial services. In other words, make it as streamlined as possible. Outsource as much as possible. Provide only those services that clients value and need. Do a market assessment of the non-financial service side, just as you do on the financial side, and make sure that you are providing the correct mix of education and services. That's a challenge.
Does providing all these services keep Pro Mujer from reaching more women?
Well, there is a trade off. Maybe you're not growing as quickly. Maybe you're not paying as much attention to your financial services as you might be. We're at a point now where we really want to institutionalize and formalize all of our services, and make them as efficient as possible - to scale up, but not lose the holistic approach.
In Nicaragua, of around 7,000 pap exams for uterine cancer, almost 10 percent of the women were found to have malignant tumors. That's almost 700 women. That's a big number, but it does not show up on a balance sheet. For a traditional microfinance organization that is toting up their financial indicators, saving lives doesn't appear. The point is, these services serve women well, they result in healthier children and women, and in many cases, many of these women wouldn't be here if weren't for these tests that detect malignancies. You really can't quantify that.
Does this focus on health get lost when commercial microfinance providers expand?
It's possible that women who are borrowing from (commercial microfinance banks) Compartamos, BancoSol, or MiBanco are using their profits for health services. You can't say that that's not happening. All I can say is that based on my experience and given our particular set of clients, when they come in, they're generally not accessing health services. One of our objectives is for women to maintain their health and the health of their families. That's not part of the design of many other microfinance institutions, nor was it ever.
What are the major challenges in scaling up?
They are legion. We are almost 20 years old and have almost 200,000 clients in five countries. But we are striving to go to scale, and that's going to require real effort in building our capacity. Probably the clearest trend over the last 19 years has been going from an NGO mentality to a business mentality. We want to stay in business, and we want to keep saving clients' lives.
The engine of growth is the financial services. They have to be top-notch - what clients need and want, what they will stay and pay for - and we have to join the ranks of the committed and the commercial. The differentiation will be that we will maintain the group methodology and continue to reinvest in our clients. Our goal is not to create big dividends for shareholders.
A loan and access to credit is very important, but it's not the only thing, and I think there's recognition today that it's going to take a multi-sector approach to alleviate poverty. You have women who, more than anything else, want their children to have a better life. That's what fuels Pro Mujer's success.
editor: Valdis Wish
publishing date: May 1, 2008
