On April 23, 2008, local Argentine funders and HIP hosted the first of two yearly technical workshops for grantees under the program Promoting Diaspora and Local Support for Productive Initiatives.  The workshop covered topics such as financial management of grant funds, marketing, and conceptual discussions on integration among local producers and international export markets. The event was led by HIP’s in-country consultant in Argentina, Juan Pena, and included the active participation of local donors - Standard Bank, Los Grobo and Minetti Foundations – as well as the grantees themselves. 

The projects are:

Fammi Olio

A two-year grant totaling $154,355, the project Fammi Olio is led by the Fundación Pedro Antonio Marzano.  Founded in 1952, the Fundación Marzano’s mission is to promote local development by managing economic development initiatives that aim to improve productive activities in small and medium sized agricultural producers. Marzano also provides direct technical assistance to unemployed individuals, especially rural women, so that they may star-up their own micro-enterprises.  Based in the Mendoza province, the funded project focuses on the horizontal and vertical integration of a group of 20 to 30 small olive producers in rural Mendoza. The grant will facilitate the acquisition of a pressing machine, which will allow the producers who only harvest olives as raw materials to press the olives they currently harvest into olive oil, thereby greatly increasing the value of their productions. This project will also help them to find new export markets for the olive oil through the support of Argentine individuals in the United States and Spain. 

Comercio Exterior Solidario- Hecho por Argentinos y Argentinas

A two-year grant totaling $54,400, the project Comercio Exterior Solidario – Hecho por Argentinos y Argentinas is led by the cooperative Mutual Gesol.  Founded in 1991, Mutual Gesol’s mission is to guarantee the basic rights of all individuals and families by supporting vulnerable, low-income populations in the outskirts of Buenos Aires City through the incubation of projects that generate self employment. Based in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the project seeks to provide employment to 600 to 1,000 micro-entrepreneurs by training them on production processes, packaging and exporting their products.  The project will enhance the production of diverse items such as authentic candles, textiles, shoes, wood and furniture products, and Argentine foodstuffs for the Argentine and European markets. The products will be manufactured by clusters of micro-entrepreneurs. Mutal Gesol will provide technical assistance and support in the marketing and distribution activities, which will be conducted through multiple Argentine diaspora organizations and individuals in Spain and Belgium.

Background

Building on the success of three Funders’ Collaborative grantmaking rounds, which provided capacity building support to forty-seven Argentine nonprofit organizations and an early childhood education initiative that has supported 64 educational organizations, HIP, the Inter-American Development Bank and a cohort of three local Argentine foundations (the Minetti, Standard Bank and Emprendimientos Rurales Los Grobo Foundations), launched the first transnational grantmaking round in the Argentina in the summer of 2007.  The focus of the program is to support community based productive initiatives led by local NGOs and cooperatives, with the participation of Argentines abroad.  Seventy-five organizations applied for funding, and twenty organizations were pre-selected as finalist projects.  Of those projects, two were selected by HIP, the IDB and the local site committee of funders.