Check out this post from our partner Women Thrive Worldwide about the importance of the GROWTH Act, which has reintroduced in the Senate this summer.
-Margaret McDonnell

People thought Alicia would never do anything more than sweep streets. After she had to drop out of school, they thought she would never go back. When she got married at 15 and had her first child, her fate was sealed in the eyes of her community – she would spend the rest of her life sweeping streets, struggling to earn enough to feed her children.

But Alicia had other plans.

The daughter of a desperately poor family in Colombia, Alicia del Socorro Meneses has spent her whole life overcoming what could easily have been crippling challenges.

When a bloody conflict unfolded in her village, she and her husband were forced to leave their home. They moved to a new city, Agua Blanca, and hand built a house from cardboard in the slums. Alicia struggled for five years, until she met a group of Catholic nuns who gave her a small micro-loan through one of their development programs. Alicia used the loan to start a small business selling food from her house. She called her business “Alicia’s Delicacies.” Soon she was making a profit. Her husband started treating her with more respect, she was able to buy her children more necessities, and her neighbors began to view her as a community leader – she was even elected for local office!


With her new success, Alicia enrolled in a university certificate program to study business development, cooperatives, and project management. Her new skills enabled her to grow her business and employ four new women. Today Alicia’s Delicacies is thriving and Alicia is working with the same nuns who helped her, to teach other women in the area how to start their own businesses.

Says Alicia, “Now I am able to train other women and I hope that they will be able to lift themselves from poverty just as I have.”

Alicia’s story is a testament to the power of micro-finance to transform women’s lives. Last year, Alicia traveled from Colombia to Washington, DC to convince lawmakers to pass the Global Resources and Opportunities for Women to Thrive Act (GROWTH), a bill now in the Senate that would give millions of women the opportunity Alicia had.

Walking through the halls of Congress with Women Thrive staff Alicia said, “I really want the U.S. Congress to pass the GROWTH Act because […] it would open the doors for women to benefit from micro-finance and invest in local organizations like mine – we are the key because we know best how to solve local women’s issues on the ground.”

Activists around the country are participating in a call-in effort to urge Congress to pass the GROWTH Act. We need your voice: Please call your Senators TODAY and ask them to support the GROWTH Act!

Here’s how to take action:

1. Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Senators’ offices.

2. When an office staffer answers the phone say, “As a constituent of Senator ______, I am calling to ask the Senator to highlight his/her commitment to ending global poverty and empowering women worldwide by co-sponsoring the Global Resources and Opportunities for Women to Thrive Act, S. 1425.”

Please take action for women like Alicia: Call your Senators today!

-Mckenzie Lock, Women Thrive Worldwide

Photo caption: Alicia and a Senate staffer outside the office of former Oregon Senator Gordon Smith