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Pro Mujer is an international microfinance and women’s development network that provides Latin America’s poorest women with the means to build livelihoods for themselves—and a future for their families—through microfinance.
In this audio lecure, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, founder Lynne Patterson talks about how she co-created Pro Mujer back in 1990 as a "kitchen table" effort in Bolivia. Since then it has grown into a network that has disbursed $327 million in small loans to poor women in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico, and Argentina. She emphasizes the organization's triple mission not only to help women gain an economic foothold, but also to assist them with business training and health care support so that they may become holistically empowered.
Lynne Patterson is executive director and cofounder of Pro Mujer International. She spent the first part of her career in the United States promoting educational programs for low-income families and children, as a teacher and administrator in the New York City and Port Washington, Long Island, public school systems.
In 1990, she moved with her family to Bolivia where she joined forces with Carmen Velasco to develop training programs for women receiving donated food. The two developed an inclusive, comprehensive program based on what the women insisted were their primary needs. The training programs in business development, child development, and health and family planning eventually led to the founding of Pro Mujer. Patterson has degrees in government (BA, Principia College), education (MA, Teachers College, Columbia University), American history (MA, New York University), and educational administration (EdD, New York University).
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