A Craft Business Blooms
El Salvador's business plan competition helps a committed entrepreneur to expand her handicraft business, bringing new economic opportunities to women in a struggling rural community.
READ MOREImpact
Since 1975, TechnoServe’s projects have connected enterprising Salvadorans to buyers in the dairy, ethnic product and coffee industries and created thousands of jobs. TechnoServe supported 72 young entrepreneurs in rural areas through basic business training.
Stories
Grounds for Success
TechnoServe is helping Central American coffee groups such as El Salvador's BEXCAFE to increase rural incomes by tapping into premium coffee markets.
READ MOREHelping Small Fruit Farmers Become Exporters in El Salvador
With TechnoServe’s help, Beto Gonzales and his fellow jocoteros have turned a floundering business into a successful cooperative that provides Salvadoran migrants in the US with goods from their homeland.
READ MOREOn The Ground
Projects
New Markets for Ethnic Products
TechnoServe helped small businesses export ethnic products to the sizable market of Salvadorans living in the United... States. We worked with nine companies to improve their production, processing and export of traditional products such as pastries, frozen fruits, cheeses and other food items. The program also benefited rural farmers who produce the source materials needed by these companies. In addition, TechnoServe helped Salvadorans capitalize on remittances, which account for nearly 20 percent of the GDP, but are rarely used to fuel the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the key drivers of economic development. TechnoServe partnered with local and international microfinance institutions to identify ways to leverage remittances for this purpose.
Supporting Smallholder Dairy Farmers
TechnoServe, with financing from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, helped a group of dairy farmers and processing... plants in northern El Salvador gain access to higher-paying export markets by improving the milking process, modernizing plants and establishing links with buyers. The program created nearly 1,000 new jobs over two years. The program emphasized two areas: improving opportunities for women and promoting environmentally-friendly farming and processing practices. We are also helping dairy farmers improve the productivity of their cows by producing low-cost, high-quality feed.
Building Coffee Growers’ Capacity
TechnoServe helped coffee producer groups become more profitable by growing and selling lucrative specialty coffee.... Using tools such as traceability software and quality management systems, TechnoServe business advisors trained the producers in industry best practices. One of the core cooperatives has seen its production of specialty coffee grow sixfold over several years, with a proportional increase in jobs and a near doubling of employee wages.
Partners
Inter-American Development BankBlog Posts
September 16, 2011
Photo of the Week: A Familiar Fruit
Farm workers in El Salvador sort through crates of jocote, a fruit native to Central America. A TechnoServe program assisted jocote farmers and other producers of native products to sell to the Salvadoran migrant community in the United States.
July 1, 2011
Photo of the Week: A Fresh Roast
Reina Flores roasts a batch of coffee beans at the BEXCAFE cooperative in El Salvador. TechnoServe helped the members of BEXCAFE grow higher-quality coffee and increase their productivity, improvements that led to new jobs for the community and higher incomes for farmers.
May 13, 2011
Photo of the Week: A Craft Business Blooms
Ana Rosa Graf of El Salvador launched a handicraft business, Arte Comasagua, to help provide a livelihood for women through collages created from local materials such as flower and leaves.
Contact
TechnoServe El Salvador
Calle El Mirador, #5824
Tel: +503 2520 3200 |
Roberto Vega Lara
Country Director |
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