Living
and working in Latin America can be as disheartening as it is
enriching. So much of what frustrates us, crime, poverty, pollution, corruption,
seems too overwhelming to grasp, let alone begin to change. Over the
last decade, we have been fortunate enough to meet some people who are
improving things, albeit one day at a time, one life at a time.
InfoAmericas is proud to sponsor the following charities, to whom
we have given time and monies as a company and even more
substantially, as individuals. They range from small to large in size
but they share a common goal to assist the most needy in the region:
children and women, who are often left behind by government
administered assistance. Each organization is audited each year by
international quality assurance organizations. Individuals from our
company have visited with each, volunteered time and ideas and
personally grown attached to each organization.
We encourage you to research each of these worthy causes through
their respective websites listed below and to give generously with
your time and resources.
Vida Bela strives to inject hope in Brazil’s poor by providing
scholarships to bright, diligent students who are left out of Latin
America’s elitist education system.
In most Latin American countries, public universities maintain very
high standards and are free or highly subsidized. Entrance exams test
the curriculums of the best educated high school students, a
curriculum that is usually only offered in the best private schools.
Publicly schooled high school students are taught neither the breadth
nor quality of courses that are needed to enter public universities.
Ironically and sadly, publicly funded universities are out of reach to
the very students that the system was built to educate. With up to 60%
of public education budgets spent at the university level, government
policy only exacerbates the alarming divide between the rich
(educated) and the poor (uneducated).
Private universities and technical colleges can absorb a wider
profile of students but their significant costs keep them out of reach
to most high school graduates, except those who enter through a
scholarship. Vida Bela’s goal is to generate funding and a screening
process in order to help worthy high school graduates enter a private
university or college.
Please browse the Vida Bela site to learn more about the inspiring
young people that we are trying to help get the education that they
deserve.
Pro Mujer was created to help rebuild broken communities by
empowering the traditional pillar of Latin American families - the
mother. Across Latin America women are often left to their own devices
to raise children while their husbands travel far away to earn money
in large cities or other countries. Other women are abandoned by
expecting fathers and become unwed mothers, ostracized by traditional
communities. Most Latin American governments lack the resources to
support the millions of mothers left alone to raise their kids in
modern Latin America.
Pro Mujer gives women small loans ranging from $50 to $400 to
launch their own business. These budding entrepreneurs are also
trained in fundamentals of small business management from bookkeeping
to marketing. Pro Mujer also provides health education, and links
women and their families to health services. No formal guarantees are
required to secure these loans, but women are asked to form groups of
25 to 30 women each, called communal banks, and to guarantee each
other’s loans. If a woman cannot repay her loan, the other members of
her group must repay it for her.
Not surprisingly, Pro Mujer has a higher loan repayment rate than
mega projects financed by global NGOs and government donors. Once a
loan is repaid, it is re-loaned to another woman in the community,
providing an impressive multiplier effect at the grass roots level.
Started from humble beginnings in 1990, Pro Mujer now provides
training and credit to 52,000 clients in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Peru.
In November 2001, Pro Mujer launched a fourth program in Mexico.
