Martín Burt receives the award in Cartagena.

Martín Burt, Fundación Paraguaya

Raising a New Entrepreneurial Generation

For Martín Burt, winner of the Inter-American Development Bank's annual award for social entrepreneurship, promoting microenterprise is not just a means to help poor people make a decent living and build better futures for their families. In his eyes, it is also a civic responsibility.

"To invest in microenterprise is to invest in citizenship," says Burt, managing director of the Fundación Paraguaya para Cooperación y Desarrollo. "It's turning people from mere inhabitants of a country into true citizens."

An economist by training, Burt has also had first-hand experience in Paraguay's bruising politics. He and a group of businesspeople started the foundation in 1985, during the dictatorship of general Alfredo Stroessner. After the military strongman was toppled in 1989, Burt served as deputy trade minister in a transition government. In 1996 he ran as the candidate of an opposition coalition and was elected mayor of Asuncion, the nation's capital. At the time he was only 39 years old.

After serving a single tumultuous term, his work is now focused on the foundation, which has continued to expand its mission. Its original goal was to help microentrepreneurs hone their business skills but it soon found that the lack of credit was a greater obstacle to sustainability and growth. With assistance from ACCION International, the foundation started Paraguay's first microcredit program. It has opened 11 offices, served more than 27,000 clients and provides not only microloans but also agricultural credit to small farmers.

Fundación Paraguaya runs Junior Achievement programs to promote entrepreneurship among children and young people. Since 1995, thousands of students have participated in these programs, which expose them to business leaders and the business world. The programs include starting virtual companies by drafting business plans, raising resources and selling products. After they graduate from school, young entrepreneurs can turn to the foundation's business incubator, which offers them office space as well as legal, accounting and marketing support services.

In 2002 the foundation took over an agricultural high school that has been transformed into a self-sufficient organic farming school that sells its students' output to be self-sufficient. Students not only learn about growing crops and raising animals but also how to run farms as an efficient business in a country with Paraguay's social and economic conditions, where nearly half the people live below the poverty line.