Davis Projects for Peace Award
Funds CMC Students' Effort to
Develop Small Businesses in Chile

Veronica Pugin '12, and Nicholas Egger-Bovet '12, have been awarded a Davis Projects for Peace grant of $10,000 for their project called C.H.I.L.E., which aims to improve micro and small businesses in Chile.
The project's acronym stands for Capacity-building Helping to Improve the Lives of Entrepreneurs (C.H.I.L.E.). As two Economics/International Relations majors, Pugin and Egger-Bovet will be taking a closer look at small businesses in Chile and helping them become more sustainable. Many micro businesses in the country are funded by or started through microfinance loans, but Pugin and Egger-Bovet are focused on the entrepreneurs' ability to sustain their businesses long-term. (Read their project proposal here.) In a two part project, the pair will conduct a needs assessment and figure out which businesses need what kind of help. By asking about their areas of needed improvement, they will identify which businesses, for instance, need to be better at accounting or need help in marketing. From that assessment, the CMC students will design and teach classes for the business owners.
Pugin and Egger-Bovet will also help the entrepreneurs in writing business plans tailored to their individual needs.
The CMC students will be completing this project with BanIgualdad, Chile's largest microfinance organization, which has nearly 18,000 clients. Through BanIgualdad, the students were able to identify 400 small businesses, with which to work more closely.
They chose Chile because Veronica has personal ties to the country her extended family lives there. They also chose the country for its striking potential to reach next level success in the business sector. Chile has the 14th highest income gap in the world, leaving the country's poor frustrated by economic instability. As small businesses represent 96 percent of all private enterprises in the country and employ 58 percent of the entire Chilean workforce, the CMC students feel this a crucial time in Chile's economic development.
"With 2.3 million micro and small businesses in Chile, it's really important to their economy. It's often a microloan that helps people start a business, and it's empowering. But we've found that running a business isn't always second nature to everyone. So we're taking it a step further we believe that a microloan coupled with other services, such as a business plan and basic finance classes, are the best chance for long-term success," said Pugin.
"Lots of people in poverty are just thinking about that day bread for that day. But businesses need long-term planning," she added.
Egger-Bovet said, "We're interested to learn what role small businesses, in particular, can play in eradicating poverty. If we can help strengthen them, then the business owners will be able to provide more for their families and eventually hire other people, creating employment."
In addition to the Davis Project for Peace award, the students received financial support from the Center for Human Rights Leadership and the President's Fund to attend the Global Education Summit (GES) at Northwestern University last month. At GES, the pair met with experts in the field of development and student peers working on comparable economic development projects, and received feedback on their project from these groups. The C.H.I.L.E. project was also selected for additional consultation with Mission Measurement, a social impact consulting firm, who will work with the pair on post-project analysis.
Founded by Kathryn Wasserman Davis in 2007, the Davis Projects for Peace awards grants to undergraduate students, who design grassroots projects that promote world peace and address root causes of conflict. Davis committed $1 million to fund projects in 2011.