Rural Associative Enterprises in the Trifinio region learn how to develop Annual Operational Plans

• ESCALAR conducts a workshop on the creation and execution of Annual Operational Plans for 25 participants from eight organizations
  
  

With the aim of strengthening the capacities for the development and construction of tools that improve the business management of Rural Associative Enterprises (ERAS), the ESCALAR project: Scaling climate adaptation solutions for resilience and migration reduction in the Central American Dry Corridor, led by CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), held a training session on September 25 and 26 that addressed the importance of developing Annual Operational Plans (AOPs).

The workshop on AOPs is part of the socio-business strengthening process that began in 2023 with the participation of four ERAS from the Trifinio region, an area impacted by the ESCALAR project. Four more ERAS from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have since joined.

The course, managed by the ESCALAR technical team, brought together 25 people, including representatives from Boards of Directors, administrative staff, technical personnel, and strategic partners of the project.

“The course is part of the strategic processes being carried out to ensure that rural enterprises and producer organizations can achieve their goals and efficiently implement their resources,” said Anthony Gamboa, Sustainable Agribusiness Specialist at CATIE.

“In this workshop, I learned how to conduct a diagnostic process and write objectives that are measurable, tangible, and have defined deadlines,” said Sandra María Interiano, member of the Supervisory Board of AMUCAFE.

Interiano added: “I also gained knowledge about how to conduct a SWOT analysis and how to develop actions for implementation, linking each responsible person and assigning a budget. Additionally, I have committed, together with my colleagues at AMUCAFE, to implement an AOP in 2025.”

For his part, Christian Rivas, Treasurer of the Ecological Coffee Cooperative La Labor, Ocotepeque, Ltd. (COCAFELOL), commented: “I learned about the SWOT analysis and the development of an AOP, two very interesting topics that we want to apply both in our cooperative and in other organizations in Honduras.”

With these capacity-building initiatives, ESCALAR, implemented with the support of Swedish Cooperation, seeks to improve the conditions and development of the beneficiary producer families and rural associative enterprises of the project. By implementing Annual Operational Plans within their organizations, these enterprises will become more competitive in the long term in a global environment.