NITLAPAN

NITLAPAN’s mission is to contribute to overcoming poverty, marginalization and exclusion of men and women from rural and urban areas by launching a process whereby producers and entrepreneurs are main agents of a national and Central American development with social equity and environmental sustainability. Nitlapan envisions to be an institute specializing in research on and the creation and publicizing of new local rural and urban development models and methodologies.

Nitlapan promotes concrete local development initiatives by providing a set of financial and non-financial services to micro, small and medium rural and urban businesses, especially those of women and young people. It does this within ongoing analysis, systematization and validation of all local experiences that yielded successful results and could be replicated in other territories or converted into inputs for the design of development policies in alliance with state institutions, civil society organizations, the private business sector and international development cooperation agencies. As a research and development institute of the UCA associated with the Jesuit Network of Social Works, it is dedicated to innovation; technical, business and legal advice; formation of human capital and advocacy on public policies to promote the design and application of competitive and inclusive rural development models articulated to the local, national and Central American urban sectors.

Organized micro, small and medium agrarian producers and business people in the rural sector linked to Nitlapan validate sustainable agricultural and forest management models inserted into traditional and nontraditional productive chains. In the non-agrarian rural and urban sectors, organized micro, small and medium businesses, particularly those of enterprising women and young people linked to Nitlapan and its allies, generate viable business models and initiatives. Nitlapan and its partners generate innovative ways to capitalize the subsistence of peasants with little or no land. Teachers, researchers, professionals and technicians working in relation to Nitlapan’s priority thematic areas, acquire greater skills regarding the concepts and methods generated by Nitlapan and its partners that are useful to their work.

NITLAPAN's constituencies include co-operative farmers, rural women and young employees or rural workers with little or no land, peasants and local people in traditional production lines or services, micro and small enterprises, especially if led by women and young people.