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2007 Fall Progress Report
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Fall Newsletter |
| Dear Friends, |
Volume 2 Issue 1 September 2007 |
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Greetings! We are pleased to report significant progress since our last email update in June. We have expanded our entrepreneur consulting program and now provide additional services designed to spark innovation, improve management execution, and catalyze investment in Nicaragua's small business sector. The impact of our work can be viewed in our 2007 Social Impact Report. It has left us convinced that the time is right to begin to expand outside of our base in Nicaragua. As we enter our third year of operations, key priorities as identified by the Board include: investing in institutional development, expanding to other Central American countries, building our Board, and assisting a growing portfolio of Agora-supported businesses to create sustainable social and economic value. We know we could not have made it this far without the tremendous and ongoing support of the Agora community. We intend to channel this support to entrepreneurs like Santos Reyes who are truly on the front lines of development. Santos and his wife recently took the time to sit down and talk about their experience with Agora. Listen to his words; he communicates what Agora Partnerships is trying to do better than we ever could. Very Best Wishes,
Agora Releases 2007 Social Impact Report Agora’s Social Impact Report 2007 (365 kb), including three mini cases of Agora-supported companies, is now ready to be viewed. Please tell us what you think. From the Front Lines: The Calzado Reyes Video Santos and Jacqueline Reyes discuss entrepreneurship, Agora, and their growing vision for a shoe company that can help transform a community. Click here to watch (4 min.) Agora to Help Calzado Reyes Finance New Shoe Factory
Santos Reyes started shining shoes at age seven, fled to Honduras during the Nicaraguan civil war, taught himself to read by candlelight, and in 1995 founded Calzado Reyes. The small business designs and manufactures men's shoes and has grown to employ 15 people. Santos has a proven entrepreneurial drive, a strong work ethic and a demonstrated demand from clients, yet Calzado Reyes faces stalled growth and enormous challenges -- and not just from cheap Chinese imports. Santos doesn’t have the necessary social and business contacts with major regional shoe distributors, or a way to ramp up production to meet demand -- and financing is nearly impossible to find. Like many entrepreneurs in the developing world, Santos just wants a chance to compete and to prove his company can succeed. Success for Santos means the creation of critical jobs for low income workers. Through his partnership with Agora, Santos is getting exactly this chance. We believe in this company and this entrepreneur and look forward to sharing with you updates on the company's progress.
Read more about Calzado Reyes in the Social Impact Report 2007 (365kb)
"Speed" Strategy Consulting Comes to Nicaragua
In August Agora Partnerships Nicaragua held the first ever “speed consulting” event in Central America. The event gave entrepreneurs access to half hour long, one-on-one consulting sessions with strategy, legal, international commerce and microfinance experts to discuss their business issues. Over sixty participants attended the event and the response was so positive that another event is already being organized. For more information on this and other Agora educational programs, please see the Social Impact Report 2007. Agora Hosts First Ever Entrepreneurship-in-Development Happy Hour in DC Over 100 people attended the first ever happy hour designed to raise the profile of entrepreneur-driven strategies for development. The event brought together CEOs, staff, board members, and interns of innovative, entrepreneur-focused organizations in our field including Technoserve, World Resources Institute, Ashoka, Root Capital, The Aspen Institute, YABT and Agora Partnerships. Agora is committed to helping build professional linkages and fostering collaboration and partnerships in our industry. See you next year! Carol Lancaster Joins Agora's Advisory Board We are pleased to announce that Carol Lancaster has joined Agora’s Advisory Board. Carol is the Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University and former Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Carol will provide advice to Agora’s senior management team based on 30 years of work and research in the field of international development. We are thrilled to be able to benefit from Carol’s expertise and experience. Most of our institutional focus at the moment is spent learning the most effective ways to help entrepreneurial small businesses in Nicaragua find a path to growth. But an important part of our mission is to share our experiences and promote entrepreneurial approaches to global poverty to a broader audience. Recently, Managing Partner Ben Powell spoke about social sector governance at a conference for social entrepreneurs in Brazil and about discovering opportunity at the 2007 Base of the Pyramid Conference in Ann Arbor. Ben is also scheduled to be a panelist at the Social Enterprise Conference at Columbia Business School and the Net Impact Conference later in the Fall. If you are attending any of these events, please stop by. West Foundation Gives Agora Grant for New Website The West Foundation has given Agora a grant to create a new website, which we believe will dramatically help the organization communicate its work both to local entrepreneurs in Central America and to supporters in the U.S. and Europe. We are extremely grateful for this important investment in our institutional development. The new website should go live by mid December. Thank You to Our Contributors; Help Us Sustain the Momentum We are grateful to all of you who contributed during our 2007 fiscal year, which ended in June. Private contributions – much of them at the grassroots level - are vital to our operations and leverage millions of dollars worth of consulting, investment, and development assistance for socially responsible small businesses in Nicaragua - and soon we hope in the rest of Central America. If you would like to help entrepreneurs like Santos Reyes make a difference in their communities and help us to broaden our impact, please take action and make a donation.
Bambucasa is a company supported by Agora Partnerships that seeks to manufacture low income houses out of bamboo. Bambucasa provides employment to rural workers and a way for them to provide for their families. For more on the social impact of Bambucasa please see the 2007 Social Impact Report. Agora Partnerships is a 501(c)3 non profit organization dedicated to attacking poverty and building wealth in developing countries through socially responsible entrepreneurship. Agora Partnerships provides talented entrepreneurs in emerging markets with the tools, networks, and financing necessary to launch successful, socially responsible businesses - the kind that can create decent long term jobs. We seek to create opportunities for talent to flourish in environments normally characterized by closed social networks and inefficient markets. Agora is launching its program in Nicaragua and aims to achieve rapid scale and replicate worldwide. Our mission is to identify the leadership talent of the developing world and unleash it.
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In This Issue • Agora to Finance Calzado Reyes Factory • Speed Consulting Comes to Nicaragua • Entrepreneurship-in- Development Reception • Carol Lancaster Joins Agora's Advisory Board • Agora Receives Grant for New Website • Thank You to Our Supporters! Quick Links Join Our Community Support Agora |
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