The Central America and Mexico (CAM) chapter is headquartered in Mexico City and covers Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama.
This content is also available in: Español
The chapter leverages ANDE’s global connections to strengthen the local network, foster stronger relationships, and encourage collaboration among members and other local actors. The chapter focuses on developing local research projects, building local capacity, catalyzing collaboration opportunities, and creating knowledge sharing spaces through workshops, peer learning events, roundtables, and other events.
Chapter Activities
Networking and fostering connections: Regular chapter events, both formal and informal, provide time for ANDE members to network, learn, and share best practices. They include member meetings, happy hours, webinars, pop up meetings, and workshops on different themes. We also facilitate tailored introductions and connections among members to foster collaborations and partnerships among practitioners in the SGB ecosystem and strengthen the ecosystem through the region.
Knowledge sharing: The chapter shares regular updates, including upcoming opportunities, events, and publications, with SGB stakeholders active in the region through a public newsletter, chapter updates for members, and regular promotion on our social media and other channels. We also promote members as speakers at diverse regional and global events. We are always eager to partner to tell the story of SGBs and our members’ work.
Research: Our research initiatives build the knowledge base for SGB support organizations to improve their effectiveness and create thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems. ANDE conducts both high level and specialized regional research on SGB networks and trends, which provide major value to our members. Some of our recent research work relevant to the region includes rural ecosystem snapshots, a biannual report on impact investing in Latin America, and analysis of our Global Accelerator Learning Initiative data for Mexico and Central America.
Funding: ANDE provides regular funding opportunities to both members and non-members to both drive greater resources to organizations supporting SGBs in developing economies and ensure ANDE member expertise is leveraged efficiently. Funding opportunities are meant to spur more creative and collaborative investments in SGBs and uncover how SGBs contribute to poverty alleviation and economic growth.
Learning and training: The chapter convenes learning groups on various topics, including ICT for SGBs, gender equality, impact measurement and management, and financial inclusion, and has led specialized trainings on metrics, impact investing, and more. ANDE has a particular focus on promoting impact measurement and management among the network. We encourage knowledge sharing, support the adoption of a common language to measure performance, and encourage exploration of new methods and tools to enable more efficient and useful measurement practices.
This project aims to better understand the support available to SGBs in rural entrepreneurship ecosystems and across agriculture value chains in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico. It will strengthen SGBs and intermediaries in their core business capacities using a gender lens approach that integrates the needs of women as employees, leaders, and a vital customer segment to drive growth in their businesses. The partnership will also improve the knowledge base of SGB sector practitioners on how to best support businesses to be gender inclusive and sustainable.
Through the USAID-supported Guatemala Entrepreneurship Development Initiative (GEDI), ANDE will foster a more robust entrepreneurial ecosystem to bring economic prosperity to communities heavily affected by migration within Guatemala. GEDI will develop a coordinated set of expanded business support services available to entrepreneurs, particularly to businesses run by, employing, or serving the needs of women and indigenous people, rural communities, or youth.
"This report aims to capture characteristics of the impact investing sector in Latin America over the past two years based on a sample of impact investors active in the region. Through institution-level and deal-level data shared by these investors, this report gives a snapshot of where and how capital is being allocated and identifies challenges that the ecosystem faces. The report focuses on the region widely while taking a deeper dive into three of the region's largest markets: Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico."
"According to a recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, among Latin American countries Guatemalans are particularly likely to view entrepreneurship as a good opportunity to generate income. This report also states that the adult population in Guatemala has the right mix of knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to start a business and that few express fear of failure as an impediment to starting a business, relative to individuals in other countries in the region."
"While studies have found that acceleration does, in the aggregate, have a positive effect on new venture growth, further investigation has shown that there is significant unmet need for financial capital, particularly in developing economies. Little investigation has been done on how accelerators (particularly those that do not invest in their ventures directly) make connections with finance providers and whether these efforts are effective. The Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI), a partnership between the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and Emory University, was created to explore questions such as these. Between 2013 – 2020, GALI partnered with dozens of accelerator programs to collect detailed data from entrepreneurs who applied to their respective application processes. These entrepreneurs, including those not selected into a program, were then resurveyed annually to gather valuable follow-up data about the status of their ventures over time. This knowledge brief explores GALI data from Central American startups, as well as qualitative insights from accelerators and finance providers."
Si Honduras quiere avanzar más rápido para fortalecer su desarrollo rural, generar oportunidades para detener la migración y crear paisajes más resilientes al cambio climático, Honduras debe firmar y ratificar el Acuerdo de Escazú que busca asegurar el acceso a la información, la participación y la protección de defensores ambientales en América Latina y el Caribe.
If Honduras wants to move faster to strengthen its rural development, generate opportunities to stop migration, and create landscapes that are more resilient to climate change, Honduras must sign and ratify the Escazú Agreement that seeks to ensure access to information, participation, and protection of environmental defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This group provides a space for knowledge sharing and to showcase best practices and innovative approaches around technology for a COVID-19 recovery phase among SGBs and intermediary organizations at a regional scale, taking advantage of our diverse member network and partners. (Group is conducted in Spanish)
Each chapter's gender equality action lab will ideate and prototype solutions to systemic gender inequities in the SGB sector. They convene regularly and will conclude with a funding challenge to scale promising solutions. (Group is conducted in Spanish)
ANDE’s Digitalization Learning Labs are a series of global workshops to support the digitalization of the SGB sector by facilitating knowledge exchange among practitioners and assessing the needs of intermediaries. (Group is conducted in Spanish and Portuguese)
