Paraguay suffers from widespread poverty, poor economic growth, and lack of access to water and sanitary resources. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), per capita GDP has actually fallen 7 percent over the last 25 years, placing the country in economic stress with high unemployment, inflation problems, and structural impediments. One-third of Paraguay’s population is poor, while a sixth of the population lives under conditions of extreme poverty.
This summer Empowering Nations is pleased to partner with Fundación Paraguaya, a self-sufficient, non-profit social enterprise that seeks to promote entrepreneurship and enable people of limited resources to create jobs and increase their family income. Since its foundation in 1985, Fundación Paraguaya has supported more than 30,000 micro-entrepreneurs who have created 19,000 new jobs. Its Junior Achievement program has helped build the entrepreneurial skills of more than 50,000 young people, who have learned how to apply their new skills on family farms.
Fundación Paraguaya promotes urban and rural entrepreneurship through three interrelated strategies:
- A microfinance program that supports micro-entrepreneurs and emerging entrepreneurs generally relegated by other microfinance institutions.
- An economic education program for children and young people (Junior Achievement).
- A self-sufficient agricultural high school that teaches organic agriculture and business skills to low income youth from rural areas to transform them from "poor small landholders" into "rural entrepreneurs."
To learn more about Fundación Paraguaya, please visit www.fundacionparaguaya.org.py.
Volunteers will be working in the three enterprises noted above, teaching English and providing micro-entrepreneurial, microfinance, and sustainable agriculture training. Volunteers will also help to develop and implement new, more specialized guided tours for the Agricultural School as a means of helping the school stay100 percent self-sufficient. Assignments will be dependant on volunteer skills.
We are currently looking for volunteers with business skills who speak Spanish, preferably those who have lived in a Spanish-speaking country. Our spots are limited, with two to four positions available between the months of May and August. Preference will be given to applicants who can serve for two months or longer.
If you are available to serve during the dates listed above and want to know more about the specific details, costs, and application process for our Paraguay program, contact Sarah Parson at empoweringnations@gmail.com
