Nonprofit
Fundación En Vía
Oaxacan non-profit funding women-led micro-businesses through responsible tourism and interest-free loans.
The heart of it
Fundación En Vía is a non-profit social enterprise in Oaxaca that combines responsible tourism with microfinance. Through community-led tours, the organisation generates capital to provide interest-free loans and business education to women entrepreneurs in the Tlacolula Valley.
The impact, in short
Microfinance
0% Interest Loans
Microloans are provided interest-free to participating women entrepreneurs.
Money in Motion
100% of tour profits
Directly supports En Vía’s microfinance and business education programs.
Reach
6 Communities
Active support for entrepreneurial women across the Tlacolula Valley.
Support
Free Education
Borrowers receive business training to ensure long-term venture success.
What it is
Based in Oaxaca City and working with women entrepreneurs across communities in the Tlacolula Valley, Fundación En Vía uses community-based tourism to help fund interest-free microloans and educational programs. Visitors travel beyond Oaxaca’s tourism center to meet women building businesses in their homes, workshops and communities, while their tour fees help sustain a model designed to keep economic opportunity circulating locally.
Participants visit villages such as Teotitlán del Valle and San Miguel del Valle to meet weavers, bakers, and small-scale farmers in their homes and workshops. Beyond finance, the foundation provides long-term business education and support through programs like 'Growing Strong,' which focuses on sustainable food production. By facilitating direct interaction between visitors and makers, En Vía ensures that tourism proceeds remain within the community to support generational livelihoods.
Women, Work & Cultural Continuity
En Vía works across communities with distinct economic and cultural traditions, supporting businesses that range from weaving, embroidery and food production to farming, retail and hospitality. For some entrepreneurs, growing a business also means creating a viable future for knowledge and practices carried through families and communities.
The result is not a single “craft preservation” program, but an economic model that can help locally rooted skills, businesses and ways of making remain viable.
The Microfinance Model
En Vía channels revenue from responsible tourism into its microfinance and education programs, allowing it to offer loans to women entrepreneurs without charging interest. Microfinance is paired with business education: women complete foundational business training before becoming eligible for their first loan and can continue participating in workshops as their businesses develop.
The approach treats access to capital as one part of a larger system of support rather than a stand-alone solution. Women use loans to invest in businesses ranging from textiles and food production to agriculture, retail and other locally rooted enterprises.
The Visitor Experience
En Vía's public Microfinance Tours run on Thursdays and Saturdays, bringing small groups into communities in the Tlacolula Valley to meet women entrepreneurs where they live and work. Depending on the day's route, visitors may meet weavers, farmers, food producers, shop owners and other businesswomen, hearing directly about what they are building and how access to interest-free finance and education has supported that work.
The experience is designed around conversation rather than observation. A traditional lunch and transportation from Oaxaca City are included, but the center of the day is the exchange between visitors and the women who welcome them into their businesses and communities.
Follow the thread
Across places and generations, women and their work are connected — through craft, tradition, community and shared experience. Sistra follows those threads.
Meet more women in Oaxaca City
Experience Oaxaca City through its women on A Sistra × RoamCircle Experience Chapter 01 — Oaxaca.