Interview Summary
Leonor Melo de Velasco founded the nonprofit Fundación Mundo Mujer (Women’s World Foundation) in 1985, in response to the 1983 earthquake that devastated Popayán, Colombia. Now known as Mundo Mujer el Banco de la Comunidad, the Foundation aims to work with women entrepreneurs to achieve the goals of social and economic improvement for Colombia’s low-income communities using microloans and training. In this interview, Melo describes the initial steps she took to build the Foundation regionally including finding support, securing funding, finding partners to work with, and building and maintaining relationships with a client portfolio that now totals more than half a million. Melo talks at length on the challenges she has encountered in the context of Colombia’s political and economic situations, including both the 1998-1999 and 2008 financial crises, and how her organization was able to survive. Melo explains how she was able to leapfrog beyond the regional scope through use of software, communications, and cultural awareness to expand the organization nationally. In this interview, Melo further highlights two key microfinancing innovations that her organization has developed, which have both offered tremendous help to Colombians: chattel mortgages, which are used for emergencies and relies on golden jewelry, and rural loans, which helps people keep their farms by creating custom-made payment plans for farmers based on their output. She concludes her interview by exploring methods to improve gender equality, and how her organization acts as “dream makers” for women who want to open businesses in Colombia’s low-income communities.
To innovate, we thought about our clients’ voice. What other services did our clients want? What else did they need from us? In that innovation process, we came to realize that our clients did not only need loans: they also needed to save, as savings build wealth.
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Interview Citation Format
Interview with Leonor Melo de Velasco, interviewed by Andrea Lluch, Bogotá, Colombia, November 30, 2018, Creating Emerging Markets Oral History Collection, Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School.
