In a country where interest rates exceed 11%, one NGO has been providing interest-free microfinance loans in Mexico since 2010 to help indigenous Zapotec entrepreneurial women start small businesses. Despite a severe trust deficit in financial institutions, the non-profit Fundación En Vía enjoys a 99% loan repayment rate within 15 weeks.
“We are the first and only interest-free microfinance non-profit in Oaxaca with a unique business model that combines business education and responsible tourism to empower indigenous women entrepreneurs who have the skills and need someone to believe in them.” Managing says: Director Viviana Ruiz Boijseanueau is a Mexico City native and architect who left her lucrative career as an architect to commit full-time to social justice programs focused on women’s empowerment, although her practice began with a commitment to alleviating extreme poverty among indigenous peoples. She discovers and develops skills that will allow her to “build a brighter future for herself and her family.”
Boijseanueau oversees an average of five full-time employees and 20 volunteers, including tour guides from around the world. Founded in 2010 by Oaxacan native Carlos Topete and American Emily Berens, Fundación Emprende, Intercambia y Aprende AC (known as Fundación En Vía) has developed a “twist” into a sophisticated social enterprise model based on the Grameen Bank microcredit model. Because it was difficult to convince Zapotec women entrepreneurs to join En Via, Topete decided to provide more than a steady stream of tourists buying handmade products.
To create a responsible and sustainable program, En Vía evolved to provide interest-free loans to all women entrepreneurs in need. To be sustainable, Topete provided women with “basic business lessons, not rules” on business and money management, and slowly built positive relationships based on trust, connection, and deep commitment to those who had business ideas and skills but lacked financial means.
To empower women, En Via combines microfinance and tourism with non-profit organizations to provide basic human rights that are taken for granted. Topete and Berens currently live and work abroad but remain on the board.
three female solidarity models
En Via Bank is a responsible lending beneficiary based on “educational tools and trust for women.” Boijseanueau believes that this empowerment increases women’s self-esteem.
En Via has supported over 800 indigenous women entrepreneurs in six communities in the Tlacolula Valley in Oaxaca, Mexico, through donations and responsible tourism revenue. Of those, 600 women have successfully established independent businesses or have left the program to pursue other interests. One of these is Teresa Hernandez Lopez, whose beneficiary sister encouraged her to join in 2015 to expand her chocolate and dried pepper business, which she started at home in 2009. The En Via business course taught her how to name and brand her business, customer relationships, and product displays, while working with other women entrepreneurs to learn and share her struggles. In 2023, Teresa left En Via to manage the El Guajillo store and continue to sell a variety of handmade products.
Microfinance, which currently supports 200 women’s enterprises – from weavers to livestock and vegetable farmers, food producers, clothing manufacturers and shopkeepers – helps support self-employed women who meet the necessary prerequisites and basic principles. The loans are only allocated to a group of three women entrepreneurs who need to expand their small businesses. The ‘solidarity model’ ignores the gender gap in financing that opens businesses for women who lack credit history or collateral and excludes women despite the fact that female loan recipients have higher repayment rates than men and contribute most of their income to the household. .
Once teams of three complete eight money and business management classes, they sign a contract with a promise to repay before taking out a loan of 1,500 pesos ($78). All three women must use the loan money exclusively for their business and generate revenue to recoup their investment within 15 weeks before being eligible for a second loan. Monthly required classes will help beneficiaries master key business concepts to develop and market their own small businesses and introduce them to a regular stream of responsible tourism groups. Social media training introduces them to online marketing and new selling methods, leading many women to establish Instagram accounts and offer digital payment options.
After receiving their first loan, most women create additional projects and, on average, take out at least four loans per year to maintain circular and sustainable financing. Traditionally, families in Oaxaca established cooperative family businesses that expanded with older members, preserved traditional skills, and passed on cultural skills while keeping knowledge within the family. Most women earn enough to afford schooling for their children, savings, and additional ideas for increasing profits.
Impressed by En Via’s success and its value for women, primarily Zapotecas, Carlos Vega, a Wellesley College Spanish and study abroad professor, was intrigued by the NGO’s relationship with the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca Spanish language program. Convinced that this program could be an ideal educational opportunity for students, he arranged the first language study abroad trip between the two institutions. Three Wellesley College students have already completed internships.
“Wellesley is known for ‘women changing the world.’ I saw a great opportunity at En Vía to learn more about microfinance, sustainability and responsible tourism, and to provide opportunities for Spanish majors looking for a fully immersive experience. She is a Spanish-speaking country but cannot afford to study abroad for a semester or a year,” says Vega.
Teotitlan del Valle village
En Via’s five-hour responsible tourism tours ($90 per person) bring tourists to each business managed by a female beneficiary. A 19-mile drive southeast of colorful Oaxaca de Juarez’s Centro Historico, the bustling outskirts give way to the flat, open highlands of the Tlacolula Valley region. A small town called Teotitlán del Valle at the foot of the Sierra Juarez Mountains.land of the gods Nahuatl (Aztec language) was the first local town established by the Zapotecs. According to legend, the Zapotecs crossed Mount Picacho, looked down from the top, and decided to settle in the valley below.
The town’s Zapotec and Spanish-speaking indigenous people are famous for their pre-Hispanic weaving traditions passed down through generations. Over the centuries, they have created unique motifs on their handmade wool, incorporating wool yarn weaving traditions with looms introduced by the Spaniards. wallpaper (rugs), bags, table runners, coasters and other accessories.
En Via beneficiary Brenda Martinez’s local restaurant is set amidst a tree-lined yard and a two-story, multi-family home. Brenda, her husband, mother-in-law, and four children help En Via grow the business over the next four years. Organic gardens, artisan workshops teaching weaving skills learned from family, and traditional Zapotec kitchen The restaurant serves meals learned from her mother and grandmother, all sourced from her garden and made possible by small loans.
In the center of the yard there is a long wallpaper– A covered table with an orange plastic awning sits next to an open kitchen surrounded by soot-darkened brick walls. Brenda’s mother-in-law presses the tortillas with a metal press, then deftly flattens them with her hands before tossing them on top. comalSmooth metal surface steel plates are balanced on vertical concrete blocks. Brenda’s husband lined the table with a large jug of juice, a basket of warm tostadas wrapped in handkerchiefs, and an assortment of hot sauces. A delicious bowl of warm food soon Segesa–a Zapotec hoja Santa-flavored chicken soup with roasted corn broth arrives.
Preserving the centuries-old practice of extracting pure pigments for dyeing wool, Brenda enthusiastically shows off the nopal cactus leaves that hang on the end of her outdoor kitchen wall. Covered in cochineal scale insects, she harvests the female scale insects, dries them in the sun, crushes them, and turns them into a natural red dye for wool that she uses to make bags. wallpaper, It sells table runners, blouses and other artisan-made items. Approximately 70,000 insects are dried and finely ground to create 1kg of the desired dye. Meta Crushed basalt slabs.
En Via’s “Celebrating Culture: Nurturing Creativity” campaign, which preserves the traditional crafts and cultural heritage of Zapotec communities in the Tlacolula Valley, encourages young female artisans to continue their ancestral weaving workshops and harness the talents of the next generation to transform them into new market trends. Engage them to diversify. Underappreciated older women actively pass on their expertise to a new generation of cultural preservers.
Driving off the beaten path out of Teotitlan, we stopped at the weaving business of Yanet Bazan Chavez and her husband, one of the first En Via beneficiaries. Yanet, who is pregnant with her second child, has been involved with the program for 15 years and she now grows a variety of plants used to dye wool and teaches dyeing workshops. The couple also used their profits to build environmentally sustainable solar-powered Airbnb accommodations.
Leaning against the colorful walls displaying her handicrafts, Yanet explains in English how she opened her wool dyeing and weaving workshop. As a former En Via employee, she initially used the loan to finance her jewelry business and then reinvested her profits to pay for college. She now uses wool to design her jewelry and create bags, pillowcases, rugs, runners and more.
A row of looms across the display wall thrum in motion as Yanet’s husband continues weaving. Behind the loom, a small blue-tiled swimming pool is surrounded by trees and hanging plants in recycled plastic containers. The couple are now building a brick entrance to their workshop.
Over the past six years, another beneficiary, Hermelinda, has used the loan to expand her weaving business. She now has four looms and a permanent booth in downtown Oaxaca, where she sells her products every Sunday. Standing in her yard where her own crafts are displayed on washing lines and hangers, she said that using her loan, she bought wool to use in the tapestries, bags, ponchos and other clothing items she makes.
Her husband, mother-in-law and sons help make some of the products. She invested some of her profits into purchasing an industrial sewing machine, from which she sewed leather-strap wool tote bags with silver clasps. Her husband processes digital payments beneath the colorful crafts hanging in their yard.
On the recommendation of a friend, Beatrice joined En Via nine years ago. Standing next to a small partially covered shed and bunches of garlic piled on the ground, she said she used her first loan to buy her sheep and sold her wool to local weavers. After repaying her money she invested her second loan into purchasing pigs and cattle.
Now she sells Oaxaca question They grow cheese and harvest soybeans, garlic and alfalfa from nearby farms to feed to their sheep and cattle. She and her husband harvest 800 bunches of garlic twice a year and run a successful garlic wholesale business, selling a bunch for 100 pesos (about $6).
“The most important thing is how, even during the pandemic, women have started new businesses because they have higher skills. They just need someone who believes in them and will provide them with safe funds,” says Boijseanueau. “What’s more, our beneficiaries’ children are growing more proud and confident as they watch their mothers achieve new levels of success in business and achieve financial independence.”
