Acumen Fund Inc.

Published purpose

This project seeks to support rural, mostly women-led businesses, in some of Colombia`s most fragile rural areas, through high quality technical assistance and innovative finance mechanisms that can improve their chances of being sustainable and viable over time. The initiative would seek to empower rural entrepreneurs, mainly women, in shaping the sustainable development in post-conflict regions, by investing in businesses with high potential and promoting agents of change in their communities. The project will promote a rural transformation approach in order to be inclusive, creating opportunities for women’s economic empowerment and ensuring marginalised groups are not left behind. More specifically, the project would invest hand in hand with participating communities in inclusive productive projects with proven value added. The participating communities (women owned/lead business) would contribute to the business idea their knowledge and fixed assets, while Acumen would provide patient capital, its networks, its knowledge on business development, along with capacity building on women’s economic empowerment and local leadership. The partnership would be created between communities and Acumen with a clear exit strategy following the consolidation of these businesses through tailor-made technical assistance throughout the investment and accompaniment process. By investing alongside with communities the sustainability of the interventions would improve in the long term as actions are taken based on a business-oriented angle; the role and ownership of participants, especially women in the management and decision-making expand; and the impact in the communities deepen as clear results are expected with valuable demonstrative effects for other actors to emulate. In the end, what is proposed is a new form of impact investing where women’s economic empowerment and communities are at the center of the entire process. With a view to broaden access to capital for similar businesses over time, innovative finance mechanisms such as equity, debt with variable repayment options and/or revenue based financing could be considered and lessons from their use systematized and disseminated among the impact investment community. To complement these efforts, and to foster a more inclusive, stronger socio-economic environment in the targeted regions, leadership training would also be provided to a targeted number of women rural leaders based on a set of criteria with a view to create a pool of effective female leaders and promoters of change. This initiative would promote recognition and concrete actions of women as economic actors and agents of change capable of contributing to the generation of new narratives and better living conditions for them, their families and their communities.