This week I attended the virtual colloquium: Empowerment and financial health for indigenous women in southern Mexico, organized by Trickle Up. Speakers shared good practices and lessons learned in empowering women in poverty through the Graduation Approach and Financial Inclusion in Chiapas and Yucatan, Mexico. The objective was to generate future discussions and implement the learnings in socioeconomic inclusion of the most vulnerable populations.
There were amazing speakers, including people from Trickle Up, researchers, and public officials. The different conferences and panels talked about the importance of the participation of women in inclusion programs, global experiences of the graduation approach, context of economic inclusion programs in Latin America, importance of cultural relevance, involvement of people with disabilities, indigenous women, and scalability opportunities.
Speakers mentioned that the economic inclusion of groups in poverty is not a new issue; yet, now we have more evidence. Today, there is data to help people in poverty to overcome the condition of poverty. The evidence derives from graduation programs, sophisticated assessments, multi-replicate experiences, scaling, and sustainability.
The poverty and financial inclusion graduation project in Mexico has increased participants' active participation and decision-making in savings groups, their households, and their communities. On the other hand, it has led women to have a greater knowledge of the management of resources of their homes. Finally, women have become more resilient in the face of the crisis caused by COVID-19 and climate change.
Reaching the most vulnerable populations is not easy. Speakers stated that there are two main barriers to reach them. The first one, the territory and the population, involves geographical dispersion, linguistic diversity, patriarchy, power structures, and spaces of participation for women. The second barrier, related to staff and intervention, faces obstacles such as using technologies, finding local promoters, new young leaders, and multilingual staff. For successful interventions, it is essential to have culturally appropriate technical team profiles and appropriate and flexible intervention strategies to address the most vulnerable populations' geographical dispersion, cultural and socio-linguistic diversity.
