CATIE launched the first business school for sustainable agribusiness management in Dominican Republic

• The initiative is part of the Mangroves for Development project and is carried out by specialists from CATIE's Environmental Economics and Sustainable Agribusiness Unit.

November 30, 2022. Within the framework of the Mangroves for Development Project, on November 16, 17 and 18 of this year, the first business school entitled "Training of Trainers for the Internal Governance of Associative Rural Enterprises/ERAs", (its Spanish acronym) was carried out by CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), through Evelyn Chaves and Adriana Escobedo, specialists in sustainable agribusiness.

During the workshop, spaces were established to analyze the origin and motivation for the creation of associative rural enterprises, the roles and functions of their different bodies, empowerment, conflict resolution, teamwork, planning, accountability and effective communication.

At the same time, the objective was to offer participants different tools to support internal governance processes in rural associative enterprises, understanding that each one is a different challenge, so it is important to analyze, reflect, plan and evaluate processes in order to achieve successful insertion in the value chains in which they participate.

The school began with the theme of training of trainers, characterized as a process of recognizing the experience and knowledge of the participants through popular education processes, learning by doing, playing and reflecting, discussing conceptual elements, handling difficult situations and adding local value through reflection.

Subsequently, we worked with the processes of strengthening the internal governance of rural enterprises, which requires a structure based on a clear distribution of functions, tasks and responsibilities among all the people involved in the organization.

Around 20 technicians representing ORC Consultores, AgroFrontera and the General Directorate of Border Development in the Dominican Republic participated in this first phase of the ERA, fulfilling the commitment to build the capacities of the local human resources that serve producer organizations in the community of Montecristi.

The next business school will take place in January 2023 and will focus on the business management of ERAs.