September 2009

First Ever ANDE Conference in Latin America

For the first time ANDE's training and networking opportunities will be available to local staff in Central and South America. The conference, slated to be held during March of 2010 in Nicaragua, will be hosted by Agora in collaboration with TechnoServe and Root Capital. More details will be available soon.

Agora's Consulting Expands Nonprofit's Jewelry Market

Agora Partnerships' Summer Associate, Jennifer Gootman from NYU's Stern Business School, worked with a local jewelry making project to help improve the profitability of the business. Her work included identifying the most desirable distributions channels available to the initiative. Jennifer consulted with the Nica HOPE Project, an initiative started by a former Agora Associate, Deanna Ford. The project is a part of Fabretto Children’s Foundation, an organization that provides education and alternative income-generation opportunities to youth from the Managua city trash dump. This community represents some of the most severe poverty in Nicaragua. Families often live and work under substandard health and sanitation conditions.

As part of this Fabretto initiative, youth from the community are given the opportunity to make jewelry and sell their craft. Profits from the program purchase materials, and provide valuable extra income to the students and their families.

As a result of Jennifer's efforts, Fabretto is establishing new distribution channels inside the United States for its jewelry.  As part of this collaboration Agora Partnerships became a trusted provider on eBay's World of Good site.

For more information about Fabretto’s Nica HOPE jewelry project, click here.

Agora Supported Business Featured by USAID

Carlos Fernando Solórzano, founder of VegyFrut and recipient of Agora's Entrepreneur+Impact award, was featured in a recent USAID publication. Read the article and see the importance a small business can play in alleviating poverty in Central America.

Agora Welcomes Three New Team Members

Agora Partnerships is pleased to introduce our three newest team members. We are fortunate to have these talented and enthusiastic people willing to dedicate their time and efforts to help small businesses grow and fight poverty.

Ben Gordon worked in community development financing at Merrill Lynch and Citibank before joining Agora. He spent this past summer building an irrigation canal in Zurite, Peru and helped establish a local branch for Global Student Embassy's cultural exchange program. Ben Gordon is part of the energetic class of 2005 at Brown University, where he was President of the Entrepreneurship Program.

Alex MacRae graduated in 2009 from Osgoode Hall Law School with a Juris Doctor degree, and during the of Summer 2008 he worked at the New York office of Clifford Chance. He holds a Bachelors of Commerce degree from the Sauder School of Business. He speaks French and is a Level 3 Chartered Financial Analyst candidate.

Emma Taylor is joining Agora after four years in Investment Banking and Private Equity at Goldman Sachs. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Engineering and a certificate in Finance from Princeton University.

Agora Partnerships is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to attacking poverty and building wealth in developing countries through socially responsible entrepreneurship. Agora Partnerships provides talented entrepreneurs in emerging markets with the tools, networks, and financing necessary to launch successful, socially responsible businesses - the kind that can create decent long-term jobs. We seek to create opportunities for talent to flourish in environments normally characterized by closed social networks and inefficient markets. Our mission is to identify the leadership talent of the developing world and unleash it.

In This Issue

First Ever ANDE Conference In Central America

Agora Works With Nonprofit to Provide Vocational Training

Agora Entrepreneur Profiled by USAID

Agora Welcomes New Team Members

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