CRECER Bolivia

Complete Package

CRECER, a Bolivian non-governmental organization, works in what is perhaps the most difficult segment in microfinance: very low-income women with little formal education in rural areas. Add to that challenge the political crises that have wracked Bolivia over the past few years, and CRECER's admirable achievements acquire heroic proportions.

CRECER stands for Crédito con Educación Rural (credit with rural education). It also means to grow in Spanish. Since its origins in 1985, when it started as a program of the U.S. NGO Freedom from Hunger with a 12-person team, CRECER has grown into an organization with offices in eight of Bolivia's nine departments, 250 staff and more than 50,000 clients served. Notably, even as the country suffered social upheaval and economic uncertainty, CRECER succeeded in expanding its portfolio and maintaining low levels of arrears.

In 2004 the Inter-American Development Bank recognized CRECER as one of the leading practitioners of village banking in Latin America and the Caribbean, granting the Bolivian NGO its annual award for excellence in microfinance for non-regulated agencies.

The chairman of CRECER's board of directors, Nathan Robison, attributes their outstanding results to the personalized services provided by the credit and education promoters, who address clients in their native tongues, observe communities' cultural customs and gradually transfer the responsibility for administering loans to the borrowers themselves. "The secret of CRECER's success is the relationship we forge with our clients. The credit belongs to the promoters who every day trudge the tortuous trails of the Andes and the paths of our sweltering jungles," he said.

CRECER, which works only with women, provides small loans (averaging US$150 per borrower) at the same time as it delivers participatory education services to improve their clients' understanding of finances and business skills. They also supply information on maternal and child healthcare, nutrition, sexual and reproductive issues and civil rights. The goal is not only to help women boost their family income and living standards but also to raise their self-esteem.

As a condition for disbursements, CRECER requires members of each village bank to contribute the equivalent of 10 percent of the loan they receive to a common fund known as an "internal account." Women can then borrow from the fund when they need liquidity and reinvest any savings, a mechanism that allows them to have access to short-term funds for emergency or business purposes, run their businesses more efficiently and accumulate capital.

With the help of a US$1 million loan from the IDB's Social Entrepreneurship Program, CRECER plans to expand its operations in the departments of Beni, Chuquisaca, Santa Cruz and Tarija, aiming to add 10 thousand more clients in undeserved municipalities. A US$200,000 grant from the same program will assist the NGO to produce new educational material, provide more training to its staff and develop and test an innovative product, micro life insurance.

"One of CRECER's most remarkable traits is its focus on covering costs and generating a surplus that allows the organization to grow and remain financially strong even during lean years," said IDB senior microenterprise specialist Dieter Wittkowski. "By constantly finding ways to trim expenses, gain efficiency and price their products correctly, CRECER has proved it can provide permanent financial services to clients that few others are willing or able to reach."