Pro Mujer

Mission: To offer credit, access to savings accounts, healthcare and training to poor women entrepreneurs in Latin America. 

Specialty: Small loans used for commerce and small business and enterprise.

Organization Profile:  Pro Mujer was founded in 1990 by American Lynne R. Patterson and Bolivian Carmen Velasco after meeting with and providing poor Bolivian women with empowerment training, financial planning and childhood development classes. 

Pro Mujer initially developed its sustainable, holistic microfinance methodology in Bolivia in 1990 and successfully replicated it in Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico and Argentina in 1996, 1999, 2001 and 2005, respectively.  Each country’s Pro Mujer office strives to address the specific cultural, social and economic conditions of its host country.  Currently, Pro Mujer International has two network offices, one in New York and the other in La Paz, Bolivia, both of which support ongoing developments in microfinance and expansion in other countries.

Nicaragua’s branch of Pro Mujer is a legally constituted microfinance institution whose parent organization is Pro Mujer International. Pro Mujer operates mainly in the western region of the country with its main office located in Leon and nine additional branches located in outlying municipalities. 

Pro Mujer-Nicaragua’s approach to microfinance is holistic in that it looks to provide poor women with credit, savings, health care and business training through a broad network of community banks and lending groups.  It also refers to its branches as “focal centers.”  At one of the “centers” women can seek advice about borrowing credit and/or visit the health clinic which is financially subsidized by various humanitarian organizations.

Pro Mujer’s main objective is to empower women financially, emotionally and physically which has helped to make it one of the most financially viable microfinance institutions in Nicaragua.

WCCN Partner Since: 2009

Borrowers: Pro Mujer services 24,315 clients with loans.  Of these borrowers 95% are women and 5% are men (as of 2010).

Lending Portfolio:  Pro Mujer has an average loan size of $180 with a total lending portfolio of $4,228,675.  Its portfolio is well-diversified with 75% used for commerce, small enterprise and industry, 9% for consumption, 3% for housing, and 13% for services (as of 2010).

Website: http://promujer.org