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Innovations for Poverty Action SME Initiative Conference

On November 30, 2011, MIF General Manager Nancy Lee delivered opening remarks at the Innovations for Poverty Action SME Initiative Conference, co-hosted by IPA and the MIF and held at the IDB Headquarters in Washington, D.C. This annual event brings together a broad stakeholder group of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss the latest research on entrepreneurship and SME development in emerging markets.

Dr. Lee provided a comprehensive overview of the MIF’s diverse portfolio of interventions related to SME development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which includes increasing entrepreneur access to lending, establishing business incubator and accelerator programs, supporting value chain and local economic development networks, designing entrepreneurship training for youth and young adults, and fostering the venture capital and impact investment sectors in the region. She also described the MIF’s innovative projects in new areas, including savings accounts targeting micro and small entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship training for women, microfranchising, microinsurance, and online solutions platforms that will allow entrepreneurs to access valuable information from past MIF projects.

Highlighting the MIF’s increased emphasis on conducting impact evaluations of its projects, she said: “We want to understand a project’s impact down to the individual, household or firm level.” By conducting rigorous and thorough evaluations of its projects, through their entire lifecycle from design to post-conclusion, the MIF will be better able both to identify important lessons learned and success factors that will benefit its future projects, and to communicate these results with others.

To read the entire presentation, click here.

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