WHAT WE DO ?

Over the last several decades, many organizations in Pakistan have provided services to expand Micro and Small Enterprise (MSE) incomes, but the potential to expand outreach and create marketplaces for MSEs to monetize their skills is significant. In this regard, ECDI has accorded greater attention to its private sector development work including Enterprise Development and Market Promotion with attention to the Business Enabling Environment. It seeks to help the poor increase income, employment and assets through MSE development, and through market development that benefits the poor such as Value Chain Development (VCD) and facilitating Business Development Services (BDS) including increasing access and plugging in gaps where such exist. In recent years, ECDI has moved from providing services for MSEs such as business consulting etc to a broader role as a facilitator of economic change.

ECDI believes that with the right leadership, partnership and support, Pakistan has the people power, initiative and resources to rapidly advance and achieve equitable economic development. It focuses its work towards the implementation of value chain interventions (analysis, product development, skills development training, developing market linkages) and supports MSEs through training and by creating a more supportive enabling environment by facilitating the development of appropriate and accessible service providers, improving linkages to finance, establishing networks and improving women’s mobility to access markets and services. Over the last decade, ECDI has been able to advocate for changes in the business environment in Pakistan by creating space for women micro-entrepreneurs within influential business bodies such as the local Chambers of Commerce and Industries.

The current focus of ECDI’s program is to ensure that the poor are not left behind or excluded from mainstream markets. The organization is cognizant of the fact that MSEs need facilitation and skills to successfully operate within local, regional and international market systems and require training as well as access to quality input supplies, technology, finance, and market information. In Pakistan, MSEs often function in market channels that target the poor as their end consumers. This may be because their products are of low quality, and/or they do not have access to transportation and other market outlets, and/or they do not have access to technology to add value to their products. Using value chain (VC) and sub-sector or market development approaches, ECDI is working to enable women-run MSEs’ achieve competitiveness and overcome impediments to their participation in higher value markets. To meet its objectives, the institute has been actively involved in the following activities:

• Conducting needs assessment studies for developing MSEs and markets
   

• Developing strategies for appropriate identification and selection of potential women entrepreneurs and leaders,
   

• Evolving effective training strategies and methodologies for new and existing MSEs,
   

• Implementing effective project to encourage women to engage in income generation or self employment,
   

• Developing strategies to transfer technology amongst low-income people and to link production with effective marketing,
   

• Conducting research and identifying the demand and supply constraints and opportunities in various markets, and
   

Exploring various learning mechanisms for developing tools for MSEs and BDS market development.ECDI favors focus on small enterprises as a critical route to increasing incomes and assets of the poor within a broader systemic approach that stimulates and allows the market to respond. ECDI’s core focus for future is, therefore, to leverage learning from its successful work across Pakistan to expand, adapt and introduce innovations for unprecedented empowerment of women micro-entrepreneurs in Pakistan. Both rural and urban VCs will be targeted, with awareness of the changing urban landscape in Pakistan, as well as the adoption and adaptation of approaches and technologies that have been implemented in urban development in other countries. The key challenge for ECDI in its private sector development work in the future is to show tangible, significant results in poverty eradication and deliver large-scale, sustainable programs that benefit the poor.

A viable and self-sustaining institute, ECDI depends on training, consultation and technical assistance fees from capacity development and learning events as well as action-research field projects. ECDI enjoys the support of both local and international agencies but does not accept donations. Project sustainability is a key consideration and planned from the very beginning of any initiative undertaken by the institution. Activities are designed to be demand-driven and based on comprehensive research and understanding of market mechanisms and community needs. Attention is accorded to clear and significant returns and strategies to strengthen market linkages, both by building incentives for existing market players and by providing income-oriented motivational benefits for poor women MSEs. Benefits to MSEs are ensured through financially sustainable models of project delivery and by working with private sector VC actors and institutions as much as possible.