When I first discovered Vital Voices, I was an economics student. Now, after my experience and the end of my mentorship, I still am an econ major, but with a passionate interest on development. Through Vital Voices I have learned about the imperative role that women have in developing countries, especially in mine, El Salvador. This role of mediator between home, family, job, community and country is a tough one, and one that I was able to partially understand through my mentorship in the Corporate Sustainability Department of HSBC, and will continue to understand as I explore some or all of a woman’s roles myself. The greatest example of success in balancing different roles that I had during my time at HSBC was that of my mentor, Maria Eugenia Brizuela de Avila, an exceptional woman whose eclectic accomplishments, I have described previously.

Before I describe how my mentorship and Vital Voices impacted my life (which is what this blog is meant to be for), I want to take a moment to describe one of the many perspectives on freedom. It is a known fact that in many developing countries, hundreds of thousands of women are in chains. These chains of hunger, prejudice, single-parent households, HIV/AIDS, stagnant economies and sometimes totalitarian regimes, enslave them to lives of endless poverty and destitution. Many of these women live under a democracy, vote for their elected political leaders, but can be considered slaves, slaves of vicious cycles of ignorance, fear and repression. This idea of the absence of freedom is found in Amartya Sen’s book, Development as Freedom. In this work, Sen, Nobel laureate in Economics, proposes the theory that the basis of development, or the improvement of living standards, is focused not only on the increased accumulation of wealth, but on expanding people’s freedoms. These freedoms include the freedom to choose between different markets, the freedom to live without hunger or fear, the freedom to attain an education, the freedom to pursue one’s goals without criticism or discrimination. Many women and men lack all of these freedoms and many more, and as a result, live under systems that will constantly hinder their socio-economic and political advancement, and thus confine them to an eternal “developing” stage. This painting is indeed a dire one, so here is where Vital Voices and private institutions with social responsibility such as HSBC come along.

Vital Voices’ main goal, as I understood it, is to invest in potential women leaders around the globe by providing them with access to an education, networks of contacts, leadership conferences, and examples from other women leaders that have strived to attain their own freedom their individual efforts of personal and professional improvement. I have witnessed the investment that Maria Pacheco is doing by encouraging women from rural areas in Guatemala to use their own craft skills as a sustainable way of living. I have contributed in the creation of a financial stimulus package for women entrepreneurs at HSBC El Salvador. I have been working with women who can call themselves completely free: free to pursue their goals, to attain an education, to live without fear, to raise a family in a democratic country, free to make assertive and intelligent decisions, free of deleterious diseases, free to live. This is the kind of freedom that all women in the world should have, the kind of freedom that Vital Voices champions. Their investment in women is an investment in their freedom. The question now is, what can I do to contribute to this investment? I am only a sophomore in college and have a long way to go, but as a young Latina woman, I also need to strive for the freedom that Vital Voices supports and I know that I have the best tool to get this freedom: the availability of an education.

Read more about my mentorship experience:

• A Challenge Worth Pursuing- Blog 1
• A Challenge in the Form of a Bank- Blog 2