MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Pro Mujer Launches Emprende Platform to Incubate Women-owned Microenterprises in Latin America

The US-based social enterprise Pro Mujer today launched the pilot phase of its Emprende platform, a Spanish-language resource for women running “subsistence” enterprises. Pro Mujer chose 600 women from 3,000 applicants to participate in the three-month pilot, which offers “pre-incubation” and incubation services in three categories:

Skills – Based on the idea of lifelong learning, Emprende offers learning opportunities, including via “edutainment,” with new content to be developed based on customer requests.

Collaboration – The platform includes a “collaborative hub,” with content partners such as the US-based technology firms Microsoft and Platsi. Platsi is a trilingual online learning platform targeting Latin America.

E-commerce – Emprende will connect women to third-party online sales platforms to help them find new customers.

Over time, Pro Mujer plans to expand the platform in multiple ways, such as by offering: (1) a range of modes – in-person, online and hybrid; (2) mentoring provided by peers and executives; and (3) replicating the platform in Portuguese to serve women in Brazil and in English to serve women in the Caribbean. Although the program is free to users at this time, Pro Mujer plans to begin charging a fee – perhaps in 2023 – to users who are able to pay for the service. As of now, a primary funder of the pilot phase is the Visa Foundation, an affiliate of the US-based payment technology firm Visa.

Emprende is rooted in adjustments that Pro Mujer made to its operations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company found that its clients – of whom 70 percent are millennials – were using Facebook and WhatsApp, so that is where it focused its efforts to continue its provision of “holistic” services. These offerings range from violence prevention and health education to financial literacy training and microloans, among others. For example, Pro Mujer launched an online hotline in Bolivia for women experiencing domestic violence. The company also connected women to volunteers offering online legal and psychological services. To overcome the limitations of staffing and volunteering, Pro Mujer developed chatbots to distribute health information related to diseases including COVID-19 and breast cancer.

Established in 1990 in Bolivia, Pro Mujer serves clients in Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru. Its focus is to increase access to financial, health and educational services for women and their families. During 2020, Pro Mujer provided: (1) financial services to 195,000 clients, disbursing loans totaling USD 202 million; (2) 126,000 health interventions, including 11,300 cancer screenings; and (3) online workshops for 90,000 people.

Sources and Additional Resources

Direct contact with Pro Mujer

Emprende homepage
https://emprendepromujer.org

Platzi homepage
https://platzi.com/

Visa Foundation webpage
https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/philanthropy/visa-foundation.html

Additional news on Pro Mujer
https://www.microcapital.org/?s=%22pro+mujer%22

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