AgoraPartnerships.org
Title
Agora Partnerships – Home Page
Description
Excerpted from the website:
- Our History
- When Ben Powell launched the first mini-golf course in Puebla, Mexico, he was thinking mostly about a single bottom line. But as the business grew, it started to generate a more powerful kind of return. One employee, a single mother, was able to buy her own apartment because of the taxable wages she had earned. The mother’s actions inspired Ben to try to figure out how to start small businesses on a massive scale capable of creating significant social change. In 2004, Ben and a group of students at Columbia Business School wrote a business plan for a new kind of development organization to help outstanding entrepreneurs launch and finance small companies with high growth potential. During this time, Ben met Ricardo J. Teran, a serial entrepreneur who had recently co-founded the Young Entrepreneurs’ Association of Nicaragua. Together they decided to launch the model in Nicaragua, where they believed many talented entrepreneurs were stumbling when only a small, targeted amount of assistance could mean the difference between failure and success. After a pilot phase and a start-up grant from the Argidius Foundation, Agora Partnerships and its affiliate, Agora Partnerships Nicaragua, formally launched operations in 2005. To date, over one hundred fifty students, professionals and business leaders have volunteered their time and resources to help Agora grow.
Languages
English
