History

Fundación Paraguaya, founded in 1985, is the institute that pioneered promoting entrepreneurs through credit and training in Paraguay. It works throughout the entire country, through 17 regional offices and covers more than 136 cities. As a non-profit civil association, Fundación Paraguaya does not distribute dividends to its members. We earmark surplus from operations to capitalize the lending program in the heartland, to finance, sustain and support the Agriculture School in the Chaco, and to strengthen the Junior Achievement program in our strategy of expanding into the heartland of the country.

Early Days

The Fundación Paraguaya de Cooperación y Desarrollo was born in 1985 out of the frustration of a group of business and civic leaders with the then-dictatorship’s inability to tackle problems of severe poverty, and its lack of support for those wishing to work their way out of it.
The original premise was that by improving the business skills of micro-entrepreneurs they would be able to build their own businesses, benefiting both themselves and their communities.
It soon became obvious however that it was less a lack of skills stunting the growth of these businesses, but rather a lack of credit. Rapid access to a relatively small loan could make the difference between a business opportunity seized, and one lost.
Microcredit was still something relatively few people were aware of at that time. A fortunate encounter with ACCIÓN International, which at the time was developing Microfinance programs in other Latin American countries, was the start of a partnership stretching over nearly twenty years. Read more about our Microcredit program

A Return to Education

The death of dictatorship opened Paraguay to the outside world, and for the Fundación Paraguaya it brought the new possibility of co-operation with the state. It also highlighted the need for a workforce with a greater understanding of how businesses function - one capable of competing in an increasingly global marketplace.
Our Education for Entrepreneurship Program was started in 1995, in association with Junior Achievement International, with the express aim of equipping schoolchildren with such an understanding – creating the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

A Radical Future

One of the great challenges for Paraguay has been in bringing the benefits of economic development to rural areas despite the fact that more than half the population earn a livelihood from the land. In 2002 the Fundación Paraguaya was granted an Agricultural High School which would form the basis for a radical new model in development – the Self-Sufficient Organic Farm School. The potential is huge for self-financing schools to fulfill the demand for Agricultural Business Education that cannot be met by government funding alone. These are indeed exciting times.