MeXCo Soluciones´s mission is to offer a personalized and transparent approach to technological financial products that are of value to small businesses, informal sector workers and employees. During my internship at MeXCo, we worked on two projects dedicated to financial education. On one side I was responsible to conduct field work to scout unbanked locations for them to adopt and use technologic solutions and introduce them to alternative options to improve their competitiveness and efficiency in the market. I helped tailor and strategize the pilot project with Banco Santander that aims to digitally onboard mom-and-pop shops so that they can better manage their finances, offer bill pay options through a digital platform, and eventually, create an agent banking ecosystem that can allow these small microenterprises to compete with large banks and retailers that offer financial services.

The second project provided some financial education for talented women who were part of Laboratoria, an intense bootcamp that accepted women from all over Latin America and gave them an option to develop their careers in technology to change their futures completely. I conducted several focus groups to understand their most important needs and lack of information to generate a report where we showed them best practices, key moments of intervention during the Bootcamp and general information that the students needed.

I believe most of what I learnt in my course on Financial Inclusion was key to understanding the mayor lacks and needs the unbanked population required, the best practices used to achieve positive results and the mayor actors involved in the process. In addition, I also applied skills on strategy and analysis that I have extensively overseen in my policy focused courses in order to identify positive players with whom MeXCo could collaborate in the future as a consultant agency in financial inclusion. Also, every statistics class I have covered gave me tools to problem solving and the structure of viable solutions to the challenges we faced or could have and avoided.

During my internship, I had the opportunity to work with women over 40 years old that are normally excluded from the work force and have limited options to care for their families. Their training required a lot of time and careful planning but since we had limited time and resources as a starting social venture we had to learn along the way, therefore some processes were harder to settle, and they sometimes found difficulties. Also, being in Mexico City was a great opportunity to approach the unbanked population because of the high population density, but several boroughs we visited had security troubles that could put one of us in danger, therefore we had to rethink our approach and analyze potential candidates within cared for areas. Similarly, the project in Laboratoria was one where we had to pilot the ideas to introduce financial education in their curriculum while the students were beginning their studies, therefore we had trials and errors along the way and they could not benefit from our final findings in the intended manner. On the bright side, after the pilot, we handed out a detailed report that will allow future generations to benefit from our analysis since the start of the Bootcamp.

My experience with MeXCo Soluciones was valuable and eye-opening. I got to walk the streets of my city and understand the complexities of misinformation or lack of it and how by not understanding some financial strategies for their business, normally imply bigger consequences that could affect their efficiency and place in the market. Mexico has recently focused on the importance of financial inclusion in the country by naming it a main goal of the federal government, but there are still many lags in the strategy and forgotten people that have not seen the benefit of this information. I also gained deeper respect for those starting social ventures who must bet on something bigger, work harder and have smaller benefits at the beginning for the sake of their dream. They need to deal with the complexities of big clients with high expectations of whoever they call a provider, the mistrust of potential clients for being new and starting, and the uncertainty of future projects. I now further understand the complicated mechanisms starting a social enterprise entails and the passion and determination needed to keep everything afloat. But most importantly, I caught a glimpse of the potential people can have if we place a bet on them, how they can change careers and be experts in technology with dedication and determination and how when given another chance ladies that could not find work can now distribute technological solutions for people who can do more for their business and therefore for themselves.