INNOVATION PROGRAMS TO FACE EXCLUSION

I am a Professor of Development Economics and Director of a Research Centre at the University of Buenos Aires with a postgraduate degree at the University of London. Also I am a Senior Researcher at the Council of Scientific Research in Agentina. After living 6 years in London I returned to Argentina to contribute to face poverty. Therefore I created, 20 years ago, the “Asociation AVANZAR” to develop social programmes in shanty towns. Initially I was only helped by my course students. 

Since then the institution has been expanding and a consolidated field work team has been created.  My research work, and my direction on young scholars, are oriented to innovative solutions to face exclusion. 

 Consequently, I founded at that University the Observatory of Social Innovation to coordinate the actions of academics, NGOs, and Public and Private institutions to strengthen their social impact by promoting and spreading innovative social solutions.

Since the year 2000 AVANZAR is developing a programme to promote social inclusion through the provision of microcredits, life microinsurance, training courses and tutorial work to people living in shanty towns, to develop microenterprises and to improve their housing conditions. The project was later extended, to include: refugees and migrants, homeless people, (with transitory residence in public homes), or those that got out of prison or remain under parole. 

Given the deep problem of social exclusion Argentina is facing nowadays, the main objective of AVANZAR is to offer tools to expand capabilities and financial inclusion between the objective population to increase their autonomy and their abilities to be successfully reinserted in society

To strengthen the work of AVANZAR, last year I created the Observatory of Social Innovation at the University of Buenos Aires to coordinate its activities along with other institutions such as NGOs, academics, and public and private organizations. 

The project aims to improve the lives of people facing a situation of vulnerability by offering them different tools such as access to financial inclusion, training and e-commerce.

The deterioration of the economic situation faced by Argentina in the last decades generated an increase in poverty and in the number of homeless and people living under overcrowded conditions. They face high unemployment rate and their access to credits and training are almost inexistent.

People in risk of being homeless, only in the city of Buenos Aires, is estimated at 25.900. On the other hand, the population living in shanty towns increased by 82% since 1990, because of higher levels of fertility and an increase in migration from neighboring countries. It is estimated that about 300.000 people live in shanty towns or poor settlements in the city of Buenos Aires and 3 million (in 2.432 informal settlements) along the country (half of them located in the Province of Buenos Aires). Their conditions of living are very precarious and are getting worse during the present pandemic because, very often, of the lack of access to vital services such as water and sewage network. The number of refugees reached  185,702 by May 2020.

AVANZAR is an NGO which activities are oriented to help people with deep levels of vulnerability to help them to reach higher levels of autonomy to be able to improve their insertion in the society.

Provides microcredits, life microinsurances and free training courses (different kind of crafts and management workshops as well as the access to new technologies, such as software and e-commerce). Also offers tutorial work and support mechanisms such as the access to e-commerce pages, for people living in very precarious conditions including those in shanty towns, homeless people or those in risk of reaching that situation, people under conditional freedom or that got out of prison and also to refugees and migrants. The objective is to help them to develop microenterprises and to improve their housing situation.

Two teams take part in AVANZAR.  The microcredits team is integrated by credit counsellors that promote and deliver the microcredits after analyzing and improving, if necessary, the people’s submitted projects. For this purpose, they undertake personal contacts with the persons involved including the visits to their homes.

The training team is in charge of the training activities and personal tutorial work and is integrated by instructive coordinators and workshop facilitators.

The community is integrated by people, which are between 18 and 68 years old, that live in shanty towns and in marginal areas of the city of Buenos Aires and the surroundings areas in the Province of Buenos Aires. The program is also oriented to refugees, homeless people or those in risk of reaching that situation, people under conditional freedom wearing an electronic tag, or that got out of prison 

An important aspect of the AVANZAR work is the personal and frequent contact that the people of our team undertakes with the persons we are working with. This helps us to understand their needs and to create a deep relationship and a mutual engagement between them and the institution.
On the other hand we have created and Advisory Council (Consejo Promotor), integrated by people representative of each of the different areas where we work, to inform, render account, discuss the best way to address their needs, to let us now the main people concerns, as well as to get them more involved with our activities . We consider this is way to listen to their ideas as a way to enrich very much our work.

The dimension of The Elevate Prize we approach is related to increase the opportunities for people, especially for those which are more vulnerable or left behind.  This is precisely the objective of the AVANZAR Program.  

The way we try to do it is by developing tools, such as the access to microcredits, training and trade facilities, in order to promote the expansion of their capabilities and motivations to develop their own economic projects.

By the year 2000 I was shocked by the level of poverty existed in Argentina. Then I thought that to offer some answers required, not only to do research in economics, but also to implement real life projects and to combine both activities. 

At that time I was a full time full Professor in Developing Economics at the University of Buenos Aires and decided to adapt Mohamad Yunus microcredit project to the reality of shanty towns people  in Argentina. After consulting international experiences, I started the project supported initially only by my students and even the initial funds were apported by two colleagues and me 

Our first office location was in a community kitchen located in the first Shanty town we worked. Then,I contacted a bank to deliver the credits and to cash the payments Then we were gradually receiving different supports help by the fact that I was quite wellnown as an academic. This made possible to get gradually the support of different organizations inside and outside the country. Since then we extended our work to several shanty towns.

Since then my main activities at the University were oriented to find
answers to face the different social problems

I think that having graduate and post graduate degree is a privilege that requires some sort of compensation to society. It is hard to accept that a country as rich as Argentina, regarding different resources, could show levels of poverty of over 35% nowadays (it was only 4% in 1974)

Therefore my main challenging matter, as a social scientist, is oriented to apply my knowledge to look for innovative solutions to improve the access to better opportunities, especially for people standing at the lowest social level. In fact 50% of the argentine children are below the level of poverty; this should worry us, not only because of social inequity, but also because of the negativegrowing perspectives of a country that is wasting much of its future human capital.

Our project in AVANZAR is looking for the improvement of our borrowers' life conditions but also for the future of the children belonging to their families.

It could be an example of what can be done for people living in exclusion conditions who cannot access to better quality jobs. 

As Nobel Prize Amartya Sen pointed out, it is much more efficient than a policy for the poor based basically in subsidies.

An fundamental reason I am in a good position to assure the continuity and expansion of AVANZAR and of the Observatory of Social Innovation is my enthusiasm and engagement to consolidate their present activities, my experience in creating very good teams and to develop new innovative projects that could increase their social impact. In fact this has become my main life objective.

In that context I can combine 20 years of experience in the field work thanks to my strong involvement as President of AVANZAR, with a deep capacity to develop new ideas as a result of my long research experience. This have allowed me to published several academic documents and diffusion articles on social matters such as my book “Microcreditos, una experiencia contra la exclusión” Published in 2004 by Editorial NORMA

In order to expand the field work of AVANZAR we have signed collaboration agreements with different institutions such as the University of Buenos Aires, the United Nations institution related to refugees (ACNUR), The Ministry or Justice of Argentina (related to people under conditional freedom), the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) to develop projects to generate private demand for our borrowers and many other private and public institutions

The creation of the Observatory of Social Innovation in the sphere of the University of Buenos Aires, where I work as a full Professor, should be an important contribution to strengthen the activities of AVANZAR, in conexion wuth other institutions, and to contribute to the dissemination of new ideas regarding social impact.

The creation of AVANZAR was done without any external support. Only some students of my course of Development Economics help me to start the project that showed initially deep difficulties of implementation: we had no funds; the Shanty towns people were initially quit reluctant to received our credits because of their lack of confidence and experience on that matter; we had no location to implement a system to deliver the credits or to cash their payments. Therefore it was required to develop a laborious network at a time when there were almost not experiences with microcredits for Shanty Towns people 

Also the implementation of a training program  was very difficult to established. Shanty towns people could not initially understand the importance of training to improve their lives. However after a very extended personal work we managed to create an important nucleus of participants.

Nowadays with the present pandemia and economic crisis that affect most deeply to informal people, AVANZAR is implementing a package oriented, on the one hand, to keep in touch and give support to help them to bear their difficult situations and, also, is undertaking a global strategy oriented to successfully secure the financial situation of the institution.

I think we should  continuously develop new ideas to improve the social impact of our activities. In that sense, we need to keep in touch, to listen to the problems, concerns and ideas of the people we work with, to offer better answers to their needs. This is sometimes difficult for me, given the number of people we reach with our programs of microcredits and training. Therefore I decided to create a Promoter Council integrated by representatives of each geographical area we work. This Council has periodical meetings with me and has been very helpful to deal with their needs and ideas.

I also managed to get support from different institutions to extend our programme to the homeless, people under conditional freedom and refugees.

 At the University of Buenos Aries I created the Observatory for Social Innovation to coordinate AVANZAR's actions with other institutions such as academics, business, and public and private institutions. I also promote among my collegues to undertake research on social problems  and possible solutions analyzing international experiences. This Observatory is enjoing a strong institutional support from the University and we managed to create a solid team, carryng out important activities in coordination with several social institutions.

The Ovservatory of Social Innovation createdat the  University of Buenos Aires which is an academic institution was created to expand the activities of AVANZAR

Our project has the advantage of been enriched by a combination of field  and related analytical work. In that sense it is receiving the research support  of young scolars working under my direction at the Research Centre (CENES) of the University of Buenos Aires. Also with the contacts with other universities

This allow as to follow internacional experiences and to implement new insights about the projects we are implementing at the moment and also about the development of new ideas.  This could have an significal potencial for the future, especially if we could have access to the necesary financial and institutional support.

The work we are undertaking to offer financial and training acces to homeless, refugees, and people under conditional freedom could be considered as projects that were hardly developed in Argentina before. And in order to be able to carry out these type of projects we could manage to get the financial support and also to reach institutional agreements whith the institutions that work in connection with that matters 

Finally the coordination between the work of AVANZAR with that of the Observatory of Social Innovation could offer, as well, a strong  potencial for the developing and diffusion of new innovative ideas.

After more that 20 years  we can see our work social  impact on the objective population. This can be observed through our personal contact with them as well as from several published research, including those in academic jounals such as: " El Impacto Social de las Microfinanzas. El Caso de AVANZAR, (MSc Tesis of Juliiette Renaud for the Sciences-Po Institute in Paris" published as a Work Document by our Research Centre at the University)  or "Politicas Productivas para sectores carenciados:  Microcreditos en Argentina" (by Bekerman M. and Rodriguez S. in the Journal Desarrollo Económico Number 185 of Argentina). In fact from the contact of our University with different organizations we received the visit of foreing students that came to Argentina to colaborate with as.

Our project looks for two main objectives which, at the end, can be defined as non financial and which have short and long long term effects: to expand the motivations and improve the capabilities of the people and communities we work with, and consequently to improve the qualitiy of lives of their families. We also want to expand the relationships beetween them and to influence public policies in order to improve their social impact.

Our main assumption is that to act on the motivation and the expansion of capabilities is the best way to offer autonomy and improvement to vulnerable people with no access to proper education and socio-economic opportunities. Therefore this is the main objective of our project and  the tools  we are offering are based on accees to microcredits, training and tutorial work as well to undertake close personal relashionships. We could consider that those tools are our inputs which are implemented in order to reach our objectives or outputs.

I consider that public policies in Argentina oriented to financial  inclusion for the most vulnerable people are not yet fully effective (in fact Argentina is one of the the Latin American countries where the acces to microcredits shows less development) but we want to contribute to influence those policies by showing effective examples to improve the conditions of the most vulnerable people.

The current number of people we are serving directly through our work at the momoent are 1.500 individuals (plus their families), and we estimate to have reach about 2.500 individuals in one year and 6.500 in 5 years. This objectives are dependent of the financial support we can receive and therefore can be higher 

However this number includes only the people we are working today which includes the present borrowers and people participating in the trainig courses

But along the 20 years of life the people we reached between borowers and trained people were over 16.000 plus their families 

Our goals ar based, the one hand, on extending the number of people we serve, and to expand the location to include new areas of the Province of Buenos Aires and possibly to select a new province. Also to include other sections of vulnerable people which are not covered enough by present public policies.

Since the perspective of the Observatory of Social Innovation our objective is to work in coordination with different organizations at the national and international level, to detect social needs, to discuss and implement the better answers  and  also to contribute to the diffussion of the successful results

There are severla barriers which are been worsen with the pandemic 

Financial resources for microcredits are very scarce and there are not prudential regulations that could alow microfinantial institutuons to receive public deposits as a way of financing. However I consider that to promote savings from the vulnerable borrowers could be a very important way to smooth their levels of consumption because they not only have  low levels of income but also that  those levels are very variable and sometimes non existent . Therefore if could be very beneficial for them if we could be allowed to receive their savings.

Public policies are not strongly related to promote the development of microcredit projects. That is why the accces to finance for  informal microenterprises is very low in Argentina (some estimations indicate that only 3% of their total demand is been covered)

Microcredit projects consume high levels of field work. And the level of salaries in Argentina is much higher than in other Latin American countries This fact affects the sustainability of the microcredit institutions. 

The high inflation levels of Argentina affects negatively the value of the institutions credit porfolio. 

The acces of the objetive population to the wifi network and to the new technologies  knowledge is very low. This fact makes more difficult the operations system

Regarding to the training corses it is necesary to undertake a convincing initial work aims to assure their participation as very often they are not aware of their importance to improve their projects

Regarding finantial resources we have already a portfolio, we are receiving some public support and also we are submiting projects to receive additional funds 

Regarding public policies we are proposing different measures that could help to expand microcredito projects as well to ask for the improvemente of the wifi lines in marginal areas.

Also we offer training in softtware and e commerce

Regarding the high level of salaries we try to imporve the productivity of aour team

We could reach a considerable amount of people participating in our training courses because of the field work we have done to deliver information about them

University of Buenos Aires. We have a very close relationship with this institution given the fact that I am the presedent of AVANZAR, the Director of a Reardh Center and of the observatory os Focial Innovation belonging to that institution

United Nations  High Commisioner for Refugees (ACNUR)  The agreement with this institution  is related to our work with refugees

Miniistry of Social Development of Argentina  and Ministry of Social Development of the City of Buenos Aries . In both cases we receive fiunds support 

Argentine Network of Microcredit Institution (RADIM). I am one of the directors of this network

ADRA. It is an organization that works with migrants in Argentina

Red Creer: It is a set of organizations chich work is oriented to generate social impact

Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of Argentina. The agreement with this Ministry is oriented to work with people under conditional freedom

Intermaerican Developmen Bank (IDB). We carried out to projects to develop training and e-trade acces of our objective population with this institution

RADIM: Argentine Network of Microcredit Institutions. it is a network that includes the work of several microcredit institutions.

Avanzar mainly bases its role in Business in the following products:

-Microcredits, available to invest in personal entrepreneurship, housing repair or improvement of health conditions such as ophthalmology and odontology. This product includes an interest rate that adapts to the needs of our addressees, taking into account the state of vulnerability they are in. 

-Free of charge job training which enables our addressees to acquire the tools and knowledge to achieve new enterprises. 

-Low cost Micro life insurance which provides family assistance in cash for deceased addressees’ families. 

-Trains and counsels addresses as regards financial inclusion and technology.

-Every product or service which Avanzar provides, seeks to supply the needs of the people who unfortunately have been long left aside by society, mainly because of ineffective collective policies in the most neglected areas.

AVANZAR bases its funds to carry out the mission on:

1- Search for calls to present social projects.

2- Search for new donors who want to accompany the organization in the fulfillment of its mission.

3- Search for new alliances with organizations and private companies that allow adding value to the products and services that AVANZAR offers.

4- From the taking of credits from organizations such as FONCAP and Banco Credicoop.

Avanzar and The Observatory are self-financed by:

Interamerican Development Bank- We signed two agreements to receive grants that allow us to develop our training project and promote electronic trade for the target population. 
Ministry of Social Development in Argentina and Ministry of Social Development of Buenos Aires. In both cases, we have frequently received support funds.
University of Buenos Aires. We obtained a grant to analyse social backgrounds of the population living in shanty towns.
Credicoop Bank. We receive monthly grants to cover several bank expenses. 
Different public contributions.

The estimated expenses we have for the year 2020 are approximately USD 300,000.

We are applying the Elevate Prize: 

to expand our project to more people and geografical locations; 

to expand our project related to improvement of housing

to develop value chains between our objective population 

to expand our training courses towards more diversified areas and to reach more people; 

to expand the areas of our projects related to refugees, refugees, homeless  and people under conditional freedom;

to develop new projects related to people under conditions of vulnerabilty 

To expand our project of meeting and interaction with the Representatives of our borrowers  throug the "Consejo Promotor"

I think that in addition to our finding needs, which are very important we need the colaboration of people that could help us to improve our way of working and the relation inside our team and outside with the population we work.

In fact I beleive that it is always possible to improve our activities by  receiving the contributions of other people

We would like to extend our relation with Solve. it is an institution we did not know before.

We wuld like to extend our relations to other institutions and Centres links to Social Innovations in other parts of the world to learn about teir experiences

We want tostar relationships with other institutions working with vulnerable people at the national an international level