50 Microloans for Low-Income Women in Argentina

With this report we strive to provide our donors with updated information concerning developments within our program “Emprende” with a special focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 had a considerable impact on us as an institution and the vulnerable families we are working with. Due to the measures taken by the Argentine government as a response to the crisis (a strict quarantine since March 20th), our female entrepreneurs were required to adapt their businesses to these new, limited circumstances. Here we will mention some of the actions taken by our organization in order to offer the best support possible to our beneficiaries in these difficult times.

Despite the complicated context, we were able to renew six loans for female entrepreneurs affiliated with Mujeres 2000, distributing a total of ARS 60,900 (870 USD). 

With respect to our workshops on business related topics, we realized six individual sessions of counselling, consisting in four weekly sessions about topics such as digital marketing and social media content. We are working very hard to create new workshops that are based on the input of our volunteers and their individual knowledge. Furthermore, we are working with corporate partners such as Google. Thanks to a generous offer from Google, more than 20 interested entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to upload their businesses to Google My Business.Among other benefits, this will allow their businesses to appear on Google Maps.  

Since we are now depending on virtual meetings to continue our business management courses, we reassessed former content and updated it to work better in this new paradigm. In total, 13 new female entrepreneurs began our workshop and graduated, and more than 20 women are registered in the waiting list for the new course starting in July. The five course modules have been distributed among five volunteers. 

Lastly, we are very happy to announce that we are in the initial phase of developing an app for Mujeres 2000 that will enable more efficient registration of loan fee payments from our beneficiaries, replacing the former paper-based process. 

The current financial challenge due to the quarantine required a reconsideration of the income source of the female entrepreneurs we support. Once again, this group of exceptional women has proved its innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and initiated the production of facial masks to help fight the spread of COVID-19. We received generous donations of cloth which was distributed to 25 of our entrepreneurs. 

We are – especially at this critical moment - enormously grateful for your support as a donor. Your trust in our initiatives is an important source of motivation to overcome the current challenges. Thank you for your support! 

Links:

• Visit our website
• Visit our Instagram account

With this report we strive to provide our donors with updated information concerning developments within our porgram "Emprende"!

First of all, it seems essential to us to briefly outline the general economic situation in Argentina that especially last year, in 2019, represented an enormous challenge for on the one hand our female entrepreneurs and on the other hand the management of the NGO. The current difficult economic environment, characterized by a high rate of inflation - 53.8% in 2019 as highest level in almost three decades - affected negatively the purchasing power of the population, resulting in less demand and as a consequence in less revenue for our beneficiaries´ businesses. Secondly, these developments have an essential impact on the functioning of our microcredit system, as it works on weekly installments by our entrepreneurs.

In spite of these adverse cicumstances, Mujeres 2000 was able to maintain its stability: Once again, the deep mutual confidence between the women in the neighborhoods, the NGO works in, and the management has been proved. Women who weren´t able to comply with the istallment conditions for their loan due to financial constraints show an enourmous willingness and commitment to repay their depts step by step. Mujeres 2000 adapted to this reality by a high flexibility towards the installment amount in order to avoid a further weakening of the women´s business situation. 

Whereas in 2018 in total $462,000 (pesos) have been invested in 38 first loans and 32 renewals, Mujeres 2000 spent in 2019 a total amount of $578,000 (pesos) for 29 first loans and 40 renewals. Furthermore, we achieved in 2019 the number of 199 women who graduated from the by us offered courses of entrepreneurship.

As Mujeres 2000 constantly aims to analyse its performance in order to detect potential for improvement, in 2019 we started to work with teams that contribute psychological support in the neighborhoods we work in. We saw the benefit that comes along with this initiative as it represents an additional aid that hasn´t been covered so far. Some of the women we work with are constantly facing challenges on a daily life basis that shouldn´t be underestimated: family- related issues, economic challenges, new responsabilities with respect to their businesses, etc. 

An innovation with respect to the installments represents the implementation of a new payment methodology: "Mercado Pago". It allows our beneficiaries to realize their weekly payments in a digital way, facilitating at the same time the collection process of Mujeres 2000 through for example the creation of a respective payment record of each woman. 

We are furthermore very proud to point out that Mujeres 2000 is the winner of the first edition of the "Premio Mobilize Mujeres Eprendedoras" launched by The Renault Foundation last year, 2019, in the provinces of Cordoba and Buenos Aires. It´s a prize that acknowledges projects of social organizations that promote women empowerment in the field of entrepreneurship. Achievements like this encourage us in our work towards the promotion of equal rights in society. We strongly believe in the positive impact of the organization´s initial program "Emprende" and will continue improving our performance in order to expand our network of female entrepreneurs. 

We are - in the name of every participant of the project "Emprende"- enourmously grateful for your support as donor. Your trust in our initatives is an important source of motivation to overcome all the challenges we face in the daily working process. Thank you! 

Links:

• Visit our perfile on Instagram
• Visit our perfile on Facebook