Dignity Unbound

05/31/2021

“For small businesses, paying taxes is a huge burden,” says José Ignacio Beteta, president of the Lima-based Asociación de Contribuyentes del Perú, a taxpayer watchdog organization. “It’s not only because some taxes are excessive but because the payment process is difficult and tiring.”

Previously, the government required business owners to pay taxes long before they received payment from those purchasing their products—making it impossible to produce steady revenue.

José and his team at Asociación de Contribuyentes del Perú worked directly with the Peruvian government’s tax agency, Superintendencia Nacional de Administración Tributaria (SUNAT), to advocate for simple, effective solutions that could help small business owners.

05/24/2021

Entrepreneurship unlocks the potential to growth—but in a country like Nepal, an entrepreneur needs to be creative to cope with government regulations and tailor products to deal with cultural biases.

Nepal is a landlocked country wedged between India and China in the Himalayas, with gigantic mountains, incredible natural beauty, and irreplaceable World Heritage sites. The country is multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic—rich in diversity, and endlessly interesting. This year I experienced s...

05/17/2021

Access to technology can have a bigger impact than we think, and for this child care center in Argentina, the impact was life changing.

Casa Conin currently sees approximately 78 children and 56 families a week. Before 2017, records of the children and parents that came through the doors were all kept on paper—just begging to be disorganized, lost, or ruined.

“Children and mothers used to vanish from the health system,” Conrado Etchebarne said. “But now with Conin—which picks up the forgotten people and restores them to life, with an identity in the healthcare system, and keeps a detailed record on laptops and computers of the health and medical history of children and their mothers—they can take care of themselves in the future.”

An early morning haze blankets Tigre—a vast and quiet neighborhood an hour away from the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires. The only sounds are that of children running through the streets and the howls of the stray dogs following behind. This is not a wealthy neighborhood—it’s a place where h...

05/10/2021

Located in the heart of Costa Rica, San José is home to exquisite architecture, lush rainforests, and friendly locals. It is also home to an abundance of entrepreneurs and bustling small businesses. One family-owned business in particular stands out to its community—Costa Rica Beer Factory, co-founded six years ago by Mónica Mendoza and Jaime Zuluaga as just a small restaurant. Today, Costa Rica Beer Factory has four restaurants, a brewery, a small distributorship, and an event venue that hosts craft beer fests and other cultural events. Costa Rica Beer Factory is just one example of when government reduces or removes barriers entirely, small businesses can prosper beyond their wildest dreams.

Costa Rica’s Credit Reform thanks to Instituto de Desarrollo Empresarial y Acción Social has had an enormous impact on small businesses like Costa Rica Beer ...

05/03/2021

“These business licenses are a really good opportunity for people to get out of poverty with dignity because they refuse to receive social benefits and to be dependent, and they are trying to serve the community,” Maslauskaitė explains, pointing out that the path to entrepreneurship is open to all, regardless of education, capital investment, or government subsidies. “You just have this small amount of money paid to the government and you have permission just to start, and to see how it goes.”

Ona Raudeliūnienė whisks 36 eggs together on a breezy, rainy Saturday afternoon in Zūbiškės, a small rural town in central Lithuania. She is preparing the batter for a traditional šakotis, a local, spit-baked cake that is shaped like a tree, that she will spend hours baking for a client. Šako...

04/26/2021

Imagine you own a parcel of fertile farmland, but you’re too old to work it, cannot sell it, nor use it as collateral in a bank loan. Would you say that land is really yours?

When the Ukrainian government awarded roughly 32 million hectares of arable land to 7 million of its citizens, it also introduced a “one-year” moratorium on selling that land. 19 years later, the moratorium is still in place.

The policy of the moratorium on farmland sales was designed to “help” the recipients of the land. But there were unforeseen consequences and as a result, much of it lay un-utilized or leased for next to nothing.

However, this story has a happy ending. If you want to learn more about how EasyBusiness and other Ukrainian based organizations helped turn the curve for Ukrainian farmers, click the link below!

Imagine you own a parcel of fertile farmland, but you’re too old to work it, cannot sell it, nor use it as collateral in a bank loan. Would you say that land is really yours? That hypothetical question is the reality for roughly seven million Ukrainian landowners who, after the collapse of the U.S...

04/19/2021

According to India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, there are 10 million street vendors in India—600,000 just in Delhi.

However, millions of these street vendors in India were all at the mercy of the police before the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act was passed.

Centre for Civil Society was instrumental in advancing this groundbreaking legislation, which secures a congenial environment for urban vendors to ply their trade without harassment or eviction from the local authorities. Learn more below! 👇

Street vendors are an integral part of life in India. Vegetables, fruits, milk, clothing—everything people need for day-to-day living is available from sellers who trade in the open-air. Dinesh Kumar Dixit is one of those street vendors—known locally as a “rehri-patri walla”—and he’s spe...

04/12/2021

For years, high laptop tariffs kept electronics out of reach for many in Argentina. The work of Libertad y Progreso culminated in the Macri administration eliminating a 35 percent tariff on computer imports that inflated local prices significantly. Before the tariff was removed, parents, school teachers, and small business entrepreneurs were forced to pay double what their neighbors in Chile paid for the same computer products. Want to learn more about this policy change? Check out the video NOW ⬇️

Tariff removal made more computers available to more schools, helping more children learn. The work of Argentinian think tank Libertad y Progreso culminated ...

04/05/2021

Marisol lives with her three children and 74-year-old mom in Pamplona Alta, on the desert mountainside on the outskirts of Lima, Peru.

An estimated 130,000 people live in the Pamplona region, and a vast majority don’t have running water. This daily struggle affects everything Marisol and her family does. They spend so much time thinking about it, working around it, and struggling to get it. And when the water trucks do finally decide to visit her block, she’s forced to pay at least ten times more than what the average Lima city-dweller pays.

An estimated 200,000 people live in the Pamplona region, and a vast majority don’t have running water. This daily struggle affects everything Marisol and her family does.

03/29/2021

Economies can’t flourish when it’s difficult to start a business. The Samriddhi Foundation, an Atlas Network partner based in Nepal, had a recent victory reforming business registration procedures with the country’s Office of Company Registrar (OCR), reducing the time it takes to register a new domestic business from several days down to a maximum of 30 hours. Businesses funded by foreign investments have also had their registration time reduced from weeks down to seven days. Samriddhi consulted with the government throughout the reform process.

Economies can’t flourish when it’s difficult to start a business. The Samriddhi Foundation, an Atlas Network partner based in Nepal, had a recent victory reforming business registration procedures with the country’s Office of Company Registrar (OCR), reducing the time it takes to register a ...

03/22/2021

As Mrs. Maria Mothupi held the official deed to her land for the first time, her face spread into a wide smile. Until she was 99 years old, she had never experienced living in her own home or in a home legally owned by her family, because she was only two years old when the 1913 Land Act banned land ownership by black people in South Africa — a law that continues to have consequences today, despite its repeal more than two decades ago.

This unlikely happy chapter toward the end of a hard life came about thanks to the Free Market Foundation (FMF) of South Africa’s Khaya Lam (My House) Land Reform project. FMF’s pilot project focused on the Ngwathe municipal area of the Free State province, where FMF Director Eustace Davie estimates that there are about 20,000 houses for which the ownership rights have not been documented and registered.

As Mrs. Maria Mothupi held the official deed to her land for the first time, her face spread into a wide smile. Until she was 99 years old, she had never experienced living in her own home or in a home legally owned by her family, because she was only two years old when the...

03/15/2021

Ukraine’s people have been crushed for years under the weight of an authoritarian regime and a stagnant economy, but new Atlas Network partners are working to change the country’s direction. Ukrainian Economic Freedoms Foundation (UEFF), founded in 2015, is working on several projects to help reform the judicial system, streamline bureaucratic obstacles to business activity, provide taxpayers with useful information about deductions and protect them from arbitrary tax hikes, promote transparency for government expenditures, and much more.

Ukraine’s people have been crushed for years under the weight of an authoritarian regime and a stagnant economy, but new Atlas Network partners are working to change the country’s direction. Ukrainian Economic Freedoms Foundation (UEFF), founded in 2015, is working on several projects to help ...