The social entrepreneurship prize was awarded to Brother Roberto Costa Prats, director of Corporación Hogar de Cristo in Ecuador. This Spanish-born Jesuit heads one of his order's largest programs in that South American country, where they have built 120,000 houses for poor families.
Mibanco of Peru won the prize for excellence in microfinance for regulated institutions. Mibanco was established in 1998, the first Peruvian microfinance institution born from an NGO. Its predecessor, Accion Comunitaria del Peru, worked with microentrepreneurs for 33 years.
Fundación Mundial de la Mujer of Bucaramanga, Colombia, took the prize for excellence in microfinance for non-regulated institutions. This non-profit agency, founded in 1987, has achieved high growth rates and remarkable levels of efficiency in its operations, which focus on small loans to women entrepreneurs.
Another Colombian institution, Actuar Famiempresas, won the prize for excellence in business development services. The Medellin-based Actuar was established to foster employment in the department of Antioquia, where it serviced 29,000 clients last year.
Under the Building Opportunity for the Majority initiative the IDB will seek to triple the volume of microcredit in the region over the next five years. The annual volume is currently estimated at around $5 billion. The goal is to reach $15 billion by 2011, mostly through the entry of more banks in microfinance.
The initiative will also seek to help Latin American and Caribbean countries eliminate bureaucratic and economic barriers to job creation and the formalization of enterprises that operate in the informal economy.
Building Opportunity for the Majority will cooperate with government agencies, private sector institutions and civil society groups to expand access to housing, reliable utility services and basic infrastructure such as rural roads and mass transport systems.
The IDB expects such efforts to provide low-income people more opportunities to build assets and improve their living standards.
Inter-American Development Bank
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