- We should become more sensitive or reconnect with the problems, so that everyone takes action. In a globalized world, we can easily lose closeness with the problems. When it happens, the level of empathy is lower. As social entrepreneurs do, we need to engage personally with the problems we want to solve. (Linda)
- Another thing that we need to do as an ecosystem is change who is the protagonist. Perhaps the protagonist shouldn’t be the person (social entrepreneur) anymore, we must make the systemic change the protagonist and work towards that shared goal. (Linda)
- We need to learn how to organize ourselves and collaborate. The collaboration between actors is critical to cover the hypercomplex challenges we are facing (Daniela).
- We should support the entrepreneur by creating the right infrastructure. There isn’t an infrastructure to support social entrepreneurs from when they start. For example, entrepreneurs spend a lot of time, 2 or 3 years, or more before they recognize themselves as such, and they understand that there is an ecosystem that can support them. (Daniela)
- More key actors, more entrepreneurs, more resources are required: donators, investors, media, trainers, governments, universities. I believe that this would be key and very exciting to see more better-quality actors. (Armando)
- We must create an innovative culture. Latin America isn’t a region strongly invested in technology development, but there is a lot of innovation in strategies and intervention models. (Armando)
- We need more formal, open, and democratic meeting places with better accessibility to young people seeking to get involved in social and environmental impact initiatives. (Armando)
ES2 Latam is a platform that is incubated by the global alliance PES Latam. Organizations behind PES Latam are Ashoka, Bridge for Billions, LeFil Consulting, New Ventures, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and VC4A.
ES2 Latam is a Latin community within the VC4A platform, which is Venture Capital for Africa, a platform that was born 10 years ago from Ben White and other co-founders. This started as a volunteer project saying: ” so many things have happened on the continent and we need to have a place to have all of the opportunities for entrepreneurs”.
As the years went by, the platform itself (VC4A) was refined to a point where the platform nowadays is an “excuse” for making all of the relationships and interactions seen and tangible that exist between the ecosystems and their actors. (Daniela)
A platform like this helps us to give structure to the actors a lot, to make them seen, it facilitates new actors to be able to find themselves and doesn’t depend on the ability to invest a lot of time networking. It allows new actors to incorporate themselves, to build confidence and go on generating a virtuous circle and a maturing effect, the acceleration of the ecosystem. (Armando)
I think what differentiates this platform from others is that it isn’t a platform where just one entrepreneur can go and find advertisements and other entrepreneurs, but they can also use the same platform to find their own audience or for their own network. (Linda)
