La Red de Innovación e Impacto - Meet Wakami
Watch the video with English subtitles
Through the La Red de Innovación e Impacto program, WEC and our partners support small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) and women that are accelerating business development and promoting sustainable economic growth in Latin America. Meet one of our La Red members:
Wakami, a member organization of La Red de Innovación e Impacto , is a social system that connects rural communities with world markets by working with and empowering women to generate income and transform cycles of poverty into cycles of prosperity.
Comunidades de la Tierra is a Wakami non-profit organization that focuses primarily on the lives of rural women and their struggle to generate sources of income for their families.
Wakami also supports business training for rural women. Currently they support rural communities in Guatemala with two methodologies: a) Inclusive Business: which incubates, establishes and strengthens rural businesses led mainly by women through nine training cycles carried out over a period of two years. b) Smart investment: a platform that provides access to products and services for these women – allowing rural families to invest their income strategically to improve their homes and the education and nutrition of their children.
"Thank you very much for all the support you have given us during La Red de Innovación e Impacto. The funding and projects executed together have allowed us to grow and refine a business acceleration program that will now allow us to scale and support new companies. This year we are initiating a program with UNDP and AGEXPORT, with which we will serve another 15 MSMEs, with the goal of leading them to sell on digital platforms. We were able to establish new commercial alliances with MSMEs in Guatemala and Costa Rica, and open a new point of sale for them in Antigua Guatemala, which will be the first export experience for MSMEs in Costa Rica. La Red de Innovación e Impacto has been a space that allowed us to meet others and establish new alliances. They challenged us... and took us further than we had thought. We hope to continue working together.” - Hilda María Morales, Executive Director Wakami
About LA RED
The U.S. Department of State has funded the World Environment Center (WEC) and its partners, Le Groupe-conseil baastel ltée (Baastel), and RioSlum Studio, to select organizations that are accelerating business development and promoting sustainable economic growth in Latin America. The Program, La Red de Innovación e Impacto (La Red), was established in 2014 and is a collection of 37 innovative solutions from 11 countries in the region.
About World Environment Center (WEC)
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, multilateral 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.
About Baastel
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’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.
