Economic Development Programs
Our MDM Honduras works in the community to identify local entrepreneurs, develop marketable goods, establishes co-ops and finds market and sales outlets for these goods. You’ve heard the saying, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for one day. Teach him to fish, and he’ll be able to feed his family for good.” We work on the mountain to empower our neighbors in Honduras to fish.
The Economic Development Programs encourages budding entrepreneurs to follow their dreams by teaching them business skills and by helping them get their products to market. The EDP does not just give assistance, it gives opportunities to micro enterprises birthed by the exercise of creativity and initiative. Even more importantly, those opportunities grow out of community and individual ambitions, not from an agenda imposed on them by North Americans.
We encourage entrepreneurship by helping birth creative initiatives that create jobs and accountability in the community as a means of local empowerment. One of the avenues MDM wants to explore is the MicroConsignment Model, which will help to empower individuals through business principles.
The MicroConsignment Model creates access to life-changing technologies, products and services for the as farming, marketing of goods, and sustainable practices:
- Agriculture is viewed vehicle for long term sustainability, broad-based economic growth, and poverty reduction.
- Sixty percent of Honduras’s general merchandise exports come from agriculture.
- Agriculture represents 14 percent of GNP, and generates 38 percent of all employment and 60 percent of rural employment.