WHAT'S NEW AT  COMPETE CARIBBEAN
COMPETE CARIBBEAN ANNOUNCES CALL FOR CLUSTER PROPOSALS
The Compete Caribbean Partnership Facility (CCPF) is looking to provide support to cluster initiatives that can help Caribbean firms grow, generate employment and export to new markets.

For the purposes of this call, the clusters under consideration need to be comprised of at least three private sector firms collaborating to increase competitiveness on the regional or international market. Cluster projects can include other entities such as educational, research or government agencies.

Grant funds awarded to qualifying entities will cover consultancy services such as cluster management, training, market research, business development, process reengineering, research & development, etc. Grants will be allocated on a competitive basis and will require approval by an independent Investment Panel and by the IDB.
 
To learn more about the Call for Cluster Proposals please visit:


COMPETE CARIBBEAN SUPPORTS BELIZE'S GOAL TO UNLEASH GROWTH THROUGH INNOVATION 

Officials from the Economic Development Council, the Central Information Technology Office, private sector representatives, and the Inter-American Development Bank discussed supporting an innovation eco-system in Belize to promote dynamic growth in the country. 

During the event participants learned about the potential impact of implementing an ecosystem to support entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as the roles that both the public and private sector should have in this initiative.


To learn more about the key pieces for an innovation ecosystem in Belize, please click here
COMPETE CARIBBEAN RECOMMENDS:
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CALL FOR PROPOSAL - AI FOR EARTH INNOVATION
The National Geographic Society and Microsoft's AI for Earth program are partnering to support novel projects that create and deploy AI tools to improve the way we monitor, model, and ultimately manage Earth's natural systems for a more sustainable future.

The grants given by the partnership will support projects that create and deploy open source trained models and algorithms that make key analytical processes more efficient in the environmental field. As an additional opportunity, Microsoft will help the successful proposals make the completed models available for use by other environmental researchers and innovators.
 
To learn more about the call for proposal please click here.

FEATURED RESEARCH
Publication:
Disrupting Talent: The Emergence of Coding Bootcamps and the Future of Digital Skills


Current technological trends are reshaping the educational services toward the delivery of an improved blend of vocational training and general education--deemed essential for continuous upskilling--in digital economies.

The lessons learned by coding bootcamps, acting as skills accelerators, can potentially be shared in traditional education and training settings.
 

Publication:
Integrating Gender Equality into Private Sector Development Operations


This Technical Guidance Note identifies key issues which lead to, and reinforce gender inequality, and propose possible solutions for addressing them.
This specific note focuses on Private Sector Development . The main disadvantages in this area  are disproportionately experienced by women, particularly at the low-income levels. Those women-owned businesses tend to be in low-productivity and low-growth sectors. They face limited access to finance, networking support and market information. They are also challenged by a lack of collateral and business skills. Research shows that women who own businesses have to balance their work with family responsibilities and face a lack of affordable care services .  
 

Report:
Women, Business and the Law 2019 : A Decade of Reform

The World Bank Group's Women, Business and the Law examines laws and regulations affecting women's prospects as entrepreneurs and employees across 187 economies.

Its goal is to inform policy discussions on how to remove legal restrictions on women and promote research on how to improve women's economic inclusion.

Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform introduces a new index measuring legal rights for women throughout their working lives in 187 economies. The index is composed of 35 data points grouped into eight indicators.

Discussion Paper:
Access to Credit and Productivity

Approaches to underdevelopment based on misallocation of resources have two premises. 

First, that there is huge heterogeneity in terms of underlying productivity among potential and actual entrepreneurs. Second, that the mechanisms that guide re-source allocation do not necessarily result in the resources going to the most productive entrepreneurs.

Using the Townsend Thai data and the Million Baht program studied by Kaboski and Townsend (2012), we show evidence for both these premises.  .

NEWS FROM OUR DONORS
CDB supporting efforts to reduce youth unemployment through entrepreneurship

Helping young people to become self-employed is part of the Caribbean Development Bank's (CDB) strategy to address high youth unemployment in the Region.
Director of Projects at the Bank, Daniel Best outlined the Bank's pursuit of this objective during the recent launch of a new youth entrepreneurship project 'Strengthening the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Caribbean Youth'. 
Learn more



The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is ramping up its research activity to help regional Governments better tackle challenges related to environmental sustainability, economic and fiscal resilience, and implementation.
CDB's Director of Economics, Dr. Justin Ram, announced.
"Taking it a step further, this year, the Bank proposes to publish research that focuses on assessing and measuring the vulnerability and resilience of our Borrowing Member Countries. This work will improve the measurement and therefore the utility of the index as one of the tools CDB uses to allocate our most concessional resources," stated Ram.
Latin America & Caribbean will need 23 million health and education professionals by 2040 

Latin America and the Caribbean will need approximately 12 million teachers, 3 million doctors and 8 million nurses by the year 2040. This is what  Education and Health: The sectors of the future?  , the second issue of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)'s The future of work in Latin America and the Caribbean series says in its projection of the demand for social sector professionals in 24 countries in the region.


The IDB and Mastercard launch a new Resource Center for Digital Transport in Cities

A new Resource Center for Digital Urban Transport in Latin America has been founded, with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. The Resource Center, which will be run through a collaboration between World Resources Institute Mexico (WRI Mexico), Massachusetts Institute for Technology's Civic Data Design Lab, and Columbia University's Earth Institute, will support the development of open digital urban transport data for and with Latin American and Caribbean cities.

Canada commits $28.7 million to Arctic in 2019

As a global Arctic leader, Canada will demonstrate its commitment to the circumpolar region by investing $28.7 million over the next five years in key areas.
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