Entrepreneurial Connection
Acreditar
The Alok Institute and the NGO Acreditar have created the Fundo Conexão Empreendedora, a microcredit fund, with the purpose of creating an environment of opportunities for the strengthening and/or creation of small businesses in the region of the “zona da mata” of Pernambuco, Brazil.
The project strengthens and encourages the structuring of productive activities, through microcredit and support for businesses and entrepreneurial spirit, contributing to income generation, gender equality, and local development.
The Fundo Conexão Empreendedora has already directly contributed to 239 businesses led by young people and women (75.84% of the businesses are undertaken by women and 22.82% by young people between 18 and 32 years old).
276 new jobs have been created and 1,104 people have already been “directly” benefited. Another 684 people have been “indirectly” benefited (those who do not have a formal connection with Acreditar, for example, family members and other businesses).
The Fund operates in 5 cities in the interior of Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil. They are: Glória do Goitá, Pombos, Lagoa de Itaenga, Chã de Alegria, and Feira Nova.
Supported businesses operate in urban or rural areas in the following sectors:
– Trade (57.14%): sale of clothes, fruits and vegetables, cosmetics, etc.;
– Services (7.14%): beauty salon, eyebrow design, manicure, recording of jingles, etc.;
– Production/Industry (21.43%): fabric pieces with paintings, crochet, production of sweets, cakes, breads, etc.;
– Agriculture (14.29%): vegetables, chicken, pig, goat breeding, potato and corn cultivation, etc.
Credit and Monitoring
Acreditar’s methodology associates the granting of microcredit with systemic financial education and guidance to popular entrepreneurs, so that through their own businesses, they can remain and generate wealth for the region.
About 75% of the microcredit portfolio is requested by women who are starting or already doing business in the fields of food, health, beauty or agriculture. The evidence of the positive impacts of business on the lives of families, especially their children, led Acreditar to make the issue of gender a priority in its scope of action.
About Acreditar:
Acreditar is a non-profit microfinance institution (IMF), qualified as an OSCIP-d Civil Society Organization of Public Interest. Founded in 2006, with the purpose of promoting local development, it works with oriented productive microcredit and entrepreneurship, contributing to the strengthening of local businesses.
Acreditar’s work allows entrepreneurs in the region to live with dignity in their homelands, not needing to migrate to other regions of Brazil.
