The entrepreneurs were part of the Business Incubator Program 2023 of the FGK, a learning program to accelerate the growth and success of ventures, startups or businesses that have a social impact, this initiative was developed over a period of 4 months and culminated with the graduation and entrepreneurs fair to give them the opportunity to showcase their products and / or services.

As part of the fair of this second edition of the Business Incubation program, there was also a talk entitled "Inspiration and Tools for your Entrepreneurship" led by mexican Geovaneli López Morfin, Academic Coordinator of Capacítate para el Empleo of the Fundación Carlos Slim.

"Social entrepreneurship should be considered as the sister strategy of innovation to enhance the economic and social development of the country, the role of the foundation has been to act as an articulator of the Social Innovation Ecosystem and contribute to the growth of social entrepreneurship. Currently, social challenges are perceived as opportunities to innovate and improve the capacity of people to act in their communities", said Fernando Kriete, secretary and member of the Board of Directors of Fundación Gloria Kriete.

Fernando also said that for this program there were no limitations for people to propose their projects. "Here there are projects ranging from agricultural, organic fertilizers, there are technology-based projects; for example, there is an application that seeks to unite musicians with people who want to learn music, there is another application that seeks to solve the problem of public transportation", said the secretary.

Through its training pillar “Fortaleciendo a Quienes Ayudan” the Business Incubator Program represents a step towards strengthening Social Entrepreneurship in the country through the creation of socially responsible, scalable and high-impact start-ups.

Thirty-one ventures from all over the country and from different business sectors participated in the Incubator: agriculture, environment, business services, culture, education, fashion, food, health, tourism, housing, media and telecommunications, social assistance, sports, and training.

"This is the second generation of our Business Incubator program, a very enriching experience for all participants. The purpose is to strengthen and consolidate their ventures, provide them with a space where they can meet other projects, get mutual feedback and foster alliances or synergies among themselves", said Juana Jule, executive director of Fundación Gloria Kriete.

During the incubation FGK together with the technical support of Bridge for Billions and with the collaboration of 26 salvadoran and foreign mentors provided high level learning, using a methodology based on a practical and structured learning approach. The business tools used allow the ventures to experiment, research and document their ideas step by step so that by the end of the program they could create their own business plan and be confident that they are building a viable business.

"We are from the north of Morazán and there are several projects there that are interconnected, so they recommended us to share our proposal with the Foundation and we were able to become part of the Foundation's Business Incubator", said Nelson Rodríguez, who presented his project dedicated to agriculture called Agromercado SV, which is dedicated to preventing more young people from migrating to other countries and finding an opportunity for development in the agricultural sector.

To date, FGK has trained 57 social enterprises, investing more than US$100,000 in the last two years in full scholarships awarded to the incubator. At the end of the incubation program, participants also have the opportunity to apply with their projects to the "Ayudando A Quienes Ayudan" Program's funding competition in the Social Entrepreneurship category.

Translated by: A.M