Our Strategy

In developing countries, impact entrepreneurs are the prime engines of economic progress. Collectively, they hold the keys to unlocking a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable capitalist system, but they often face numerous obstacles that inhibit their businesses from growing. By providing holistic and integrated support to the most promising impact entrepreneurs, Agora works to promote more investment, education, networks, and cultural support to businesses that can drive sustainable development. Agora aims to improve entrepreneurs' access to opportunity in some of the world's poorest countries and support the development of a robust community of impact entrepreneurs throughout Central America.

Agora works to accomplish this mission through four programmatic areas:

• Access to Knowledge

• Access to Capital

• Access to Networks

• Building a Culture of Impact Entrepreneurship

Learn More About Our Approach to Fighting Poverty

Read Ben Powell's testimony to Congress

You can't deliver enough charity to give poor people a decent life. Business is the only sustainable answer to poverty; it gives people a way to earn money to pay for a decent life themselves.

-R. Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan, The Aid Trap

Microfinance has changed lives across the globe with the idea that the poor are creditworthy. We believe it is time to extend this principle to small and growing businesses. They are the key to increasing exports, creating jobs and role models, and helping build a culture of social responsibility.