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ENGAGING THE EXCLUDED Posted by: Dagmar de Alvarez, Jefatura de la Oficina Nacional de Subsidios Estatales, Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, Panama. Directora de Fundamujer y miembro de la Asociaciòn Panameña de Ejecutivos de Empresa.

September 25, 2005

I’m glad to have found this website, created by a wonderful team of people who are making sure that common wellness gets to all and breaks the culture of the monopoly of goods, production and the most important one, knowledge. It is fabulous to have this space where we can share knowledge and experiences worldwide, definitely a step in the right direction. Since 1987 we work to integrate women to development because they are being left behind. In fact, all social problems start when a woman becomes pregnant, and she does no have the right conditions to do it, for example, if she is a teenager, she does not have education and is undernourished, etc.

Statistics show that families with women with higher education levels, will have better living conditions. I started microfinance programs for women in Panama and I am founder and Director of MIBANCO (My Bank), a commercial bank where the beneficiaries of the loans become stakeholders. Today the bank has more than 20,000, most of them, low-income people. It’s clear that without the entrepreneurial tools and without a link to the market we will not be able to include the excluded in the wave of development. We, the entrepreneurs have the challenge to build the appropriate structures and mechanisms to generate that link between the market and the excluded. We have to facilitate and develop alliances between big enterprises and the excluded.