Supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem in addressing the needs of rural and agriculture-focused SGBs.
Helping smallholder farmers transition into thriving farmer producer organizations that professionalize their operations, improve their product quality, and integrate effectively into global supply chains will allow for more prosperous communities and reduced poverty. However, achieving this requires a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem with services that adequately address the unique needs of rural SGBs. It is also important that businesses in this environment understand how to be gender inclusive and environmentally sustainable to maximize the positive impact they have on society.
- Better understand the support available to SGBs across agriculture value chains.
- 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 business growth.
- Improve the knowledge base of SGB sector practitioners to best support businesses in gender inclusivity, sustainability, and impact measurement and management.
This mapping effort, through ANDE’s entrepreneurial ecosystem snapshots, will identify players currently supporting entrepreneurship in the region, pinpoint barriers and gaps in services, and provide solutions and opportunities to address those gaps. Most importantly, the snapshots reveal where funding and capital support are most needed and where resources could best be utilized in the ecosystem. It will focus on rural areas in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and south and southeast Mexico.
Value for Women will provide gender lens technical assistance (TA) to intermediaries, investors, and SGBs from Central America and Mexico in 2021. 40 organizations will receive standard gender lens TA, and twelve will receive premium gender lens TA. The assistance includes access to Value for Women’s online Gender Smart Nexus platform.
ANDE’s CAM chapter will work to strengthen the ecosystem of support for SGBs, with a focus on gender equality and farmer producer organizations. We intend to build vibrant gender responsive ecosystems across the region, taking into account the needs of women leading and working within SGBs, as well as the unique needs of rural communities in accessing support for SGBs working within food systems and environmental preservation and providing decent work in marginalized communities.
