World Environment Center Expands U.S. Department of State “La Red de Innovacion e Impacto Innovators’ Program in Latin America
WASHINGTON D.C., October 12, 2017 /3BL Media/ -- The U.S. Department of State has awarded the World Environment Center (WEC) and its partner, Le Groupe-conseil baastel ltée (Baastel), additional funding to grow innovative, sustainable local organizations in Latin America. The current program, known as La Red de Innovacion and Impacto (La Red), established in 2014, is a collection of 30 such innovative solutions from 11 nations across the region.
The La Red network conducts training and workshops to scale business solutions to sustainability challenges; assists enterprises to participate in internationally renowned acceleration programs; communicates best practices throughout the network; and monitors and evaluates progress. To date, more than 2,230 MSMEs in Latin America have benefited from the technical assistance funded through this project, and more than 1,800 individuals have been employed or promoted. 1,240 farmers have improved their operations as a result of the work conducted through La Red.
The expanded program, funded through January 2020 for $2.56 million, will enable WEC and Baastel to significantly increase the number of participating sustainable enterprises with the goal of accelerating innovation, job creation, social entrepreneurs, and market expansion opportunities across a number of business sectors, including agriculture, agroindustry and textiles.
“La Red is designed to engage a broader cross section of stakeholders to identify labor and environmental-related challenges or barriers to inclusive economic growth, solicit innovative solutions from the region, field test concepts or approaches, and provide tools to help achieve scale and meaningful impact through partnership and cooperation,” stated Dr. Terry F. Yosie, WEC’s President & CEO.
Through the expansion of this program, several of the current La Red member organizations will be selected to work collaboratively with new participants, selected from a new regional Innovation Challenge throughout Central America and the Dominican Republic. Those two groups of La Red members will join efforts to provide trade capacity building to microenterprises beneficiaries to scale their businesses, maximizing partnerships and providing access to potential U.S. and other export markets.
About World Environment Center
WEC is an independent, global non-profit, non-advocacy organization that advances sustainable development through the business practices and operations of its member companies and in partnership with governments, multi-lateral organizations, non-governmental organizations, universities and other stakeholders. WEC’s mission is to promote business and societal value by advancing solutions to sustainable development-related problems. It manages projects for companies across their global operations, builds executive level learning and competency in applying sustainable development across a number of business sectors, and recognizes performance excellence through an annual awards program. WEC is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with regional offices in China, El Salvador and Germany.
About Le Groupe-conseil baastel ltée
Founded in 1989, Baastel is recognized for its quality services in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Results-based Management (RBM), strategic planning, project and program management, and building individual and institutional capacity in these areas. Baastel has successfully worked for many bilateral development agencies, international institutions and development banks around the world Baastel’s solid team of expertise delivers services that are customized to fulfill the most demanding and complex client needs and expectations, regardless of scale, scope, context or sector. Baastel’s outstanding reputation in the field is built on a record of international and national successes, and expertise that is backed by attention to detail, quality, transparency and neutrality. Baastel is headquartered in Quebec, Canada and Brussels, Belgium.
