My Ethical Dilemma

So, I have a project to do in my anthropology program, which is causing me some consternation. What it boils down to, is, how does one propose a solution that works within the existing system, when one believes that the existing system is illegitimate? Our issue concerns the lending of small funds (microfinance) to poor, mostly indigenous, women in Bolivia, in order to stir the creation and sustainability of small businesses for these women. The studies have already shown that these microfinance schemes tend not to work, for a whole variety of reasons, but mainly (in my view) that the greater surrounding economic situation of these people does not allow for sustainable enterprises that can grow significantly over time. Bolivia is a nation with a majority Indian population, dominated by a small, European-derived (mostly Spanish) minority population. In many ways the setting, in my view, is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, in terms of the conditions of the indiegenous majority. How, in this greater context, can these Indian women start and grow small localized businesses that would ever catapult them into anything over a subsistence level, when their surrounding environment of poverty, lack of education, little or no health care, etc., is not situated to engender sustainable business enterprises ( as the studies already seem to show)?

My job, as an "advisor" to a local enteprise by the name of Promujer, an NGO (non-governmental org.) geared to assisting local woman to develop sustainable enterprises by assisting them with small loans, is to find ways to make the complete enterprise successful, meaning the sustainable business success of the women, as well as the sustainability of the lending enterprise itself, all within a context where failure seems largely inevitable, given the conditions. Yet I must, as in the real world, find a way to make this work for these women and the Promujer enterprise in spite of the dismal conditions, to make this work under conditions where these Indian people have always been held to 2nd class citizenship with no assistance by their government that would have enabled them to move away from poverty and lack of education. They can of course, and do, make things to sell or market small commodities, but everyone is so poor that not many buyers exist. Their skills are limited by their historical conditions. Conditions are bleak.

I proposed a revolution as a beginning to resolution of these challenges. And, the revolution has indeed already begun to take place in that country as of more recently. It won't be much longer until Indian people will make be in charge of their own self-determination in Bolivia. But I am charged with making microfinance work for them now, in the exisiting circumstances; circumstances I find to be ultimately, illegitimate. A maddening, but typical Catch-22 situation, which seems to be so often the environment for these intractable types of issues. As they used to phrase it in the 19th century, with the slavery question, the Indian question, the labor question, and now, the microfinance question: "What is to be done?"

I have some ideas, but I'm already not so enthused by their chances for success.