'Investing in women is the greatest business': Catalina Escobar on breaking Colombia’s cycles of poverty

A baby died in front of Catalina Escobar because his teenage mother could not raise $30 for treatment.

A few days later, Escobar’s own 16-month-old son, Juan Felipe, died after falling from a balcony. The two events, she says, transformed her from a corporate professional into a social entrepreneur.

Her response was to found what is now Fundación Juanfe, named for her son, in Colombia’s Caribbean city of Cartagena. The organisation began with a focus on infant mortality. Escobar quickly realised that this was only a symptom of a wider problem - a lack of education, opportunity and hope for young women was creating a crisis that was killing their babies.

And so her target moved from health provision into delivering a much wider vision of a better world.

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“Poverty is created by systems,” she says. “Human beings are not born poor.”

The beginnings

Cartagena is internationally known for its colonial centre and tourism economy. Yet the city’s inequality has long been reflected in unequal access to health, education and opportunity. Escobar says the contrast was impossible to ignore when she arrived in the city as a young mother and began volunteering at Rafael Calvo Maternity Hospital.

At the time, she recalls, hundreds of babies were dying each year from preventable causes. Juanfe’s early intervention focused on neonatal care. Juanfe today says it has saved 4,449 babies and provided care to more than 204,000 patients leading to an 81% reduction in infant mortality in Cartagena.

Escobar says the results changed how she understood the challenge. Juanfe reduced infant mortality in Cartagena by 81% in its first seven years of operation, she says, at a cost of less than $800,000. The figures are central to her argument that better outcomes are not solely a question of spending more money, but of directing resources effectively.

But reducing infant deaths was not enough. Almost a third of women giving birth in Cartagena at the time were teenagers. The foundation consequently developed its “360° model”, combining health support, education, psychosocial care and pathways into work for young mothers.

Juanfe’s model prepares young mothers for roles in Cartagena’s economy and supports them in finding work. Some participants remain in employment; others go on to higher education. The Foundation describes its mission as investing in young mothers’ physical, mental and emotional health, education and employability.

The economy

Escobar’s argument is also explicitly economic. “Investing in women and girls is the greatest business of all,” she says. She argues that women’s economic participation is not a peripheral social issue, but a condition for wider growth.

The success of her project is epitomised in the story of Daniela. Recruited by guerrillas in Colombia’s impoverished Chocó region, Daniela escaped and arrived in Cartagena at 14, already pregnant. After being left homeless, she was taken to Juanfe by a friendly taxi driver. Escobar says Daniela became one of the foundation’s strongest students, entered formal work, later moved to Canada to study English and business, and now supports herself independently.

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For Escobar, this is what hope looks like and its the only force capable of breaking the cycle of poverty and teen pregnancy. The ambition is ultimately to make organisations like hers unnecessary. “My best wish?” she says. “That the organisation disappears.”