Blog

USAID CATALYZE Partners with the Private Sector to Propel the Growth of Women-owned Businesses through Innovative FinancingA CASE STUDYBackground

In the second blog in the series, the authors focus on the importance of using a retail distribution market systems lens to gain insights into the business realities of selling construction products and services to low-income customer segments. For example, low-income customers buy in smaller lots and often have important considerations related to decision-making, coping strategies, and trust that require specific business strategies and tactics. The blog examines a few examples from TCIS’s work in relation to how they applied systemic thinking related to retail distribution to improve housing outcomes for incremental builders.

This post was written by Habitat for Humanity's Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and was Originally Published on the Vikāra Institute's website.

With more than half of Hondurans younger than 25 and the majority of the population living below the poverty line, young people need access to employment opportunities. Yet, too many Honduran young women and men face dismal economic prospects with 27 percent of youth not in education, employment or training. Compounded by the impacts of climate change and food insecurity, those who cannot find jobs are at risk of falling further into poverty or migrating elsewhere in search of opportunities.

The USAID/World Council of Credit Unions’ (WOCCU) Economic Inclusion Project in March introduced to more than 100 representatives of Peru’s financial sector a formal guide that will help them identify the types of assistance refugee and migrant populations need to access formal financial services, and the best practices to help facilitate their financial inclusion.

USAID’s Amazon Vision is focused on fostering an environmentally friendly economy so that forest-dependent communities can develop their local economies in a sustainable way. Fishing is an important livelihood for Indigenous and other communities living along the Juruá River in Brazil. Both women and men in these riverine fishing communities play essential roles in the fishing industry: while men fish for pirarucu—the world’s largest-scaled freshwater fish—women process, clean, and sanitize the fish. 

This blog was written by Carolyn Barker-Villena, Corus International’s Senior Regional Director of Latin America. She reflects on the importance of private sector engagement after a recent trip to El Salvador. 

This blog was written by Carolyn Barker-Villena, Corus International's Senior Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

USAID CATALYZE Peru increases small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and producer associations’ access to finance through an innovative Pay for Results (P4R) program, which helps financial institutions (FI) minimize their risk in lending while growing their portfolios in underserved regions in the Amazon. CATALYZE Peru has signed P4R agreements with 10 FIs, which have committed to mobilize USD24.1 million to the Amazonia region.

When Hurricane Dorian struck The Bahamas in 2019, USAID led and coordinated the U.S. Government’s disaster response efforts, deploying an elite disaster team and providing nearly $34 million in humanitarian assistance.

Third in a series of five blogs on the factors that contribute to sustaining and scaling private sector partnerships from the Enduring Results Study 3.0

Over 67 million youth are unemployed globally and the majority live in rural areas with limited economic opportunities. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmingly impacted youth whose employment fell by more than twice that of adults in 2020.

(Second in a series of five blogs about the drivers of sustainability in USAID partnerships with the private sector based on the Enduring Results Study 3.0)

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently released the Amazon Vision 2020 Report describing its achievements in biodiversity and sustainable landscape initiatives across Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guyana, and Suriname. As part of this progress update, the report focuses on the Agency’s work to promote a more sustainable and innovative development model that supports Amazonian entrepreneurs with a vision for a sustainable local economy.

Worldwide, the private sector is playing an unprecedented role in shaping opportunities that improve the lives in the countries and communities that USAID supports. For six decades, USAID has partnered with the private sector to solve the world’s most complex development challenges and to help countries accelerate development progress. 

Like many women, Wamahoro, a native of Rwanda, once worked two jobs, one of which was in the informal sector. “I used to sell my baskets at the local market to supplement my farming income,” she says. At the local market, however, Wamahoro’s handmade baskets sold for only 82 cents a basket — not much in the way of supplemental income.

The global call for access to quality education for all by 2030 comes with a hefty price tag. To meet this target, we need $40 billion in additional funding every year for primary and secondary education alone. To begin closing this gap, new approaches to mobilizing more resources will be imperative, since development agencies and philanthropic organizations do not have the funds to fill the gap on their own.

Frenki Kozeli, Julian Guelig, and Dany Khy share three approaches to forming private sector engagement partnerships that can be replicated and tailored across development contexts.

Despite the fact that Guatemala is an upper-middle-income country, almost 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. Agriculture is one of Guatemala’s main economic drivers; it has employed at least one in three Guatemalans since 2000; and in 2018, the agriculture value added was ten percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

To slow the unfolding damage of COVID-19 on the tourism industry, public and private-sector representatives came together (virtually, of course) to chart a new path ahead.

This blog post explores how one USAID initiative got banks on board to provide $1 billion in services in rural Colombia and how this approach can be applied in different contexts.

USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning Senior Economist Peter Richards reflects on the potential impact of a global recession and drop in commodity prices on economic growth in the global south.

USAID is strengthening the fishing sector in El Salvador to help achieve self-reliance in coastal communities, reducing the need to migrate.

With 30% of children under five years old stunted, there are critical vitamin and mineral deficiencies among the poor population in Haiti.

Nearly 75% of the Guatemalan population is employed through small- and medium enterprises, yet local laws restrict credit unions' abilities to provide loans to SMEs.