By Felipe Cordero | Project Coordinator
Greetings from Santiago, Chile!
We are very pleased to share some exciting updates from our project! As we reach mid-year in what is the final year of the program, we continue working towards our goal of supporting 373 producers and artisans from southern Chile who were severely affected by the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, by developing social enterprises in the affected regions.
Here are some of the latest developments and impact:
Social Enterprise Competition:
Our Social Enterprise Competition in the regions affected by the earthquake has finally ended. Four remaining organizations submitted their business plans, which have been reviewed by NESsT’s business development professionals in the region, as well members of our Business Advisory Network (BAN) and corporate volunteers from JP Morgan’s Chile office. We are happy to announce that the three winners are:
Apiunisexta: A store specialized in providing high-quality products for beekeeping activities. It will sell a range of products, such as health items made from honey, food for bee colonies, machinery, and equipment for beekeepers in the O´Higgins Region, to support the needs of producers and increase the market for their products.
Surmaule: Surmaule developed a new social enterprise idea to provide its services to government institutions, NGOs and any interested persons about the practice and methodology behind community development initiatives.
Ludovico Rutten Foundation: A business that will develop high-quality welders, providing them with skills and a certification that enables them to better perform their work and ensures the quality of their work. The social enterprise will provide this service locally at very affordable prices.
These three enterprises will soon enter the NESsT Portfolio where over the next three years, they will receive funding and technical advice from NESsT experts to help them achieve their goals of running powerful social enterprise ideas.
On the first week of August 2013, NESsT will host a national event to discuss and hightlight interesting post-earthquake interventions carried out by civil society organizations, government agencies and other institutions. The idea is to host an event that will not only highlight, but also analyze and discern between succesful practices and not-so-successful practices in a post-natural disaster context. We have already began preliminary conversations with prominent thinktanks and universities, as well as other key agencies in reconstruction efforts.
We look forward to reporting and sharing pictures of this event with you!
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