The Project
Agora Partnerships, a nonprofit that catalyzes equitable and inclusive businesses across Latin America, is buildiing the productivity and social and environmental sustainability of women-led small and medium enterprises (WSMEs) in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. Agora developed a transparent and data-driven Information Exchange Platform (IEP) to facilitate relationships and transactions between WSMEs and capacity-building, market linkage, and finance actors. The platform collects, verifies, and shares data across the network of partners to decrease financing and market risks associated with information asymmetry and “opaque” WSME data.
Values and Outcomes
Agora Partnership’s project is confronting an entrenched issue in Latin America – a lack of support for women-led enterprises. The goal is to onboard 1,000+ women-led businesses to its platform over the next few years. Agora has incorporated input from WSMEs during design and development, which is an important step in making the project representative and useful for women-led enterprises. Market and financing actors can use transactional data housed in the IEP to make better informed, gender-equitable decisions.
For more information on Agora Partnerships, visit their website.