Economic Growth Colombia Project #44898

Help Train Entrepreneurs in Colombian Barrios!

by Corporacion Todos Podemos

Help Train Entrepreneurs in Colombian Barrios!

Project Report | Jan 28, 2022
Project funded! You made it happen

By ALEXANDRE APPLEFIELD | Director

Meeting with Platos Sin Fronteras, before cooking!

Dear friends of Todos Podemos,

I hope that the end of 2021 went well for you and your loved ones. As always, I am here to give you an update on the project Help Train Entrepreneurs in Colombian Barrios!, which was made possible thanks to your generous contribution. This time around, I’ll try to keep it short, but please feel free to reach out if you would like more information on the project, the beneficiaries, or anything at all, as a matter of fact. It’s always a great pleasure to hear from our supporters! :) Here we go.

First, here are some news from a few of our social entrepreneurs:

Platos Sin Fronteras: We visited one of their healthy cuisine workshops held in the oldest and most emblematic restaurant of the infamous Moravia neighborhood of Medellín. As a side note, this neighborhood stands on a hill entirely made of garbage. You can’t tell now, but I definitely recommend reading about the history of this place! Going back to the cooking workshop, we were extremely pleased to see how Platos Sin Fronteras is able to bring together such unique groups of people. That day, 3 women community leaders from Moravia, 2 volunteer social entrepreneurs who led the workshop, members of 3 non-profit organizations including ourselves, 4 tourists including a chef, and the restaurant owner, all participated, cooked, ate and learned from each other! Platos Sin Fronteras has set up a system that connects people, teaches healthy eating habits to at-risk groups, and is sustainable because it funds itself with the tourist participation fee. I’m sure you can tell from the pictures how much fun we had!

Corporación IFT is developing their international network and continues to provide university preparation courses for underserved youth in Medellín and Chocó. They have reached out to request our support in developing their online skills and tools. Thanks to your support, we will be able to provide them with personalized training and mentoring starting next month! We didn't want to interrupt the class with pictures, but still got one shot just for you!

Fundación Mayunka: As you may recall, their project was to collect and recycle used cooking oil to make decorative and scented candles. Well, they are doing it! They are now working with local restaurants in Ipiales (In the southwest of Colombia) to collect the oil. They hire low-income street recyclers to pick it up and also buy used glass containers from them. Mayunka then processes the oil to make the candles before selling them. Oil donor restaurants get to use them for free and all clients can replace their candles at a discount if they bring back the glass jar! I attached a picture that they sent us of some candles being made, to give you an idea of the process.

Just in case you missed it, here is a short video of the training program that we held with them. WATCH THE VIDEO

And we have more great news! Thanks to your contributions, we have reached our initial goal of raising $11,250. This means two things:

1. We can continue to assist and mentor our entrepreneurs so that they are in a position to consolidate their projects, become sustainable and continue growing their impact in their communities.

2. We can start preparing for a new group of change-makers to be trained. Since last year, we have been approached several times by Venezuelan migrant women, usually young mothers, looking for a way to start a new life and participate in the Colombian economy. So we decided to listen to them and create a new project just for them. The project is now open for funding.

Please visit https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/support-venezuelan-migrant-women-who-impact-colombia/ to read more about this project, or if you would like to help these women. Sharing the link with friends, family and colleagues is also extremely helpful! :)

As always, I would like to remind you how grateful the team and I at Todos Podemos are for the invaluable support you have brought to our organization during these difficult times. I cannot thank you enough for being a part of this!

We periodically publish fotos and videos of our projects on social media, so I invite you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to contribute with pertinent content or ideas for our blog.

Once again, I would like to personally reiterate my gratitude for being part of this adventure and believing in our work. As always, please stay safe, and feel free to contact us at any time.

Best regards,

Alex Applefield-Alvarez

Now we're cooking!

The full Platos Sin Fronteras experience

Pre-university class with IFT

Mayunka's recycled-oil candles in the making

Links:

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Sep 29, 2021
It's time for our trainees to spread their wings!

By ALEXANDRE APPLEFIELD | Director

Meeting at Bio Community's headquarters

Dear friends of Todos Podemos,

I know it’s been a while, but here comes your project report for Help Train Entrepreneurs in Colombian Barrios! Thanks for your patience. I have some exciting news for you that I hope you will find worthy of the wait.

First, our social entrepreneurs – the social organizations YOU have helped us train to generate their own income – have reached an important milestone!

For the past 4 months, they have been super busy attending our weekly training sessions, going on field trips to meet successful social entrepreneurs, investigating their market and competitors, building their value proposition, meeting new business partners, and a whole lot more to prepare for their final pitch and the launch of their ventures. It wasn't easy, but then again, nobody said it would be, but they did it. And they did it despite a very uncertain context with profound social unrest, which received highly preoccupying government repression (please look it up if you haven’t heard about this), and the third highest Covid-19 peak in the world after Brazil and India (our entire team got sick and had to postpone a couple sessions).

But back to the important part, our trainees graduated! ‍‍:D

A couple weeks ago, in front of 10 high-profile jury members, our 6 most advanced student-organizations – AV Community, JAC San Antonio, Corporación IFT, Proyecto Florecer, Platos Sin FronterasandFundación Mayunka – gave their pitches.

Their presentations were very well received as they were offered mentorship, technical support, and even recurring donations. Here is a short video of the training and final presentation. I hope it gives you a sense of what the sessions look like, and that you feel proud of making this happen! WATCH THE VIDEO

But everything I mentioned above is just the beginning. Now that their business model is looking good on paper, each organization needs to actually bring it to life! And as you can imagine, our work doesn't end here either. After the training process, our mission is to mentor each entrepreneur as they take their first steps to implement their plan. This requires our team to visit each organization in their community, observe their work and progress, ask strategic (sometimes hard) questions, and most of all listen to all their uncertainties, fears, and difficulties. This may seem like a tedious process if you look at it from a first-world perspective, but Colombian community organizations tend to operate in a highly organic manner, where spending time together and nourishing a strong relationship is the only feasible and sustainable path to a solid partnership. But we don’t mind it! In fact, getting to know our graduates’ environment and beneficiaries helps us bring them the best advice and support we possibly can so they can get their entrepreneurial project up and running.

We have already started, and our first follow-up visit was to AV Community in Medellin’s infamous Comuna 13. They started a small recycling business called Bio Community, which collects plastic and glass with the help of the community. They then sell the materials to companies who transform it. Bio Community’s earnings are used to organize educational and artistic workshops for the neighborhood’s children. I wanted to save this for our next report, but I took a few pictures during our outing and decided to share them with you. ;)

And that’s all for now!

Once again, I would like to thank you for your unconditional trust and patience. The team and I at Todos Podemos are so grateful for the invaluable support you have brought to our organization during such difficult times.

As always, if you or anyone you know would like to join our cause and make a meaningful impact in one of the world’s most inequitable countries, please use the following link to make a donation: https://goto.gg/44898. Your support is what allows us to keep going!

If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to contribute with pertinent content or ideas for our blog.

Once again, I would like to personally reiterate my gratitude for being part of this adventure and believing in our work. As always, please stay safe, and feel free to contact us at any time.

Best regards,

Alex Applefield-Alvarez

Kids watching a movie with AV Community

On our way to the meeting

Listen is our secret ingredient

"El Figu" telling us about his experience

View from "Altos de la Virgen" Comuna 13, Medellin

Links:

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May 4, 2021
You made it happen Meet our new trainees!

By Alexandre Applefield-Alvarez | Director

Dear friends of Todos Podemos,

Before anything else, I would like to thank you for your trust and patience, while we were figuring out how to advance in our work in such a new and unpredictible context. I’m so grateful for the invaluable support you have brought to our organization during such difficult times.

As I am sure you are well aware, while a few fortunate countries seem to be slowly finding their way out of the global Covid-19 pandemic, much of the world – including Colombia – is still in the midst of the crisis. Intensive care units are full in virtually all hospitals nationally, and Colombians constantly need to adjust to strict sanitary measures that have changed dozens of times in the past few months, usually without any prior notice. In addition, widespread social uprisings have emerged throughout the country in the past few days and will most likely intensify in upcoming weeks. While the sum of these circumstances have made planning and conducting in-person training sessions extremely difficult, we have been designing ways to work around those limitations and fulfill our mission.

As I mentioned in our last report, our team made the decision to support social initiatives with high-potential for growth and help them develop sustainable economic models to continue and expand their impact.

We are pleased to finally announce that we have selected 19 projects that will initiate their training program with us this month. 10 of them operate in the Medellín metropolitan area and will receive in-person (if possible) weekly group sessions and individual support. The other 9 organizations come from all over the country. In order to offer them quality training and guarantee a meaningful learning experience, our online program will provide them with both group sessions to present them with concepts and tools, and in-depth one-on-one support where they will be able to share their progress and receive detailled feedback.

If you would like to know more about the selected projects, here are the links to those who have a websites or social media profiles:

Our program will help this hand-picked group of socially engaged leaders grow as role-models and decision makers as they strenghten their organizations, achieve financial sustainability and scale their impact.

All this because of YOU! We are SUPER GRATEFUL and can't wait to share their amazing work and results with you!!

If you or anyone around you would like to increase your impact, please use the following link: https://goto.gg/44898. As you know, the number of social enterprises we are able to help and the quality of assistance we are able to provide will depend on the donations we receive. If we can raise another $1,500 USD, we will be able to provide each organization with post-training support and aid them to build their online presence. Our expert consultant in digital marketing will help them to improve drastically their visibility and their chances of finding clients, partners and investors.

If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to visit our blog. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to contribute with pertinent content. See our Facebook, our Instagram, our blog

Once again, I would like to personally reiterate my gratitude for being part of this adventure and believing in our work. We look forward to sharing pictures and success stories from our trainees in our next report! Thank you again for your trust and patience!

As always, please stay safe, and feel free to contact us at will.

Best regards,

Alex Applefield-Alvarez

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