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Good practice Imported

EMPRO Honduras — INCAE's Scholarship Accelerator Lifts Sales and Jobs at Women-Led SMEs

Honduras · Tegucigalpa · See the Honduras profile · See the Tegucigalpa profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 76% 57/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A fully-funded INCAE accelerator gave 40 Honduran women SME leaders management training and mentoring; 27 of them raised monthly sales by an average 35% and the cohort created 38 new jobs, two-thirds filled by women.

40 women SME leaders
Participants (first cohort) (Oct 2022 – Jun 2023)
27 of 40
Businesses with increased monthly sales (2022-2023 cohort)
35%
Average monthly sales increase (among businesses with gains) (2022-2023 cohort)
17 of 40
Businesses securing new market contracts (2022-2023 cohort)
38 jobs, two-thirds filled by women
New jobs created (2022-2023 cohort)
41 businesswomen
Second cohort size (2025)
EMPRO Honduras — INCAE's Scholarship Accelerator Lifts Sales and Jobs at Women-Led SMEs

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
INCAE Business School (Center for Inclusive and Sustainable Leadership), funded by PriceSmart Foundation and Cargill
Period
October 2022 – June 2023 (first cohort); second cohort 2025
Keywords
women entrepreneurship, SME management training, business acceleration

Context

EMPRO Honduras (Empresarias Progresando) is a 100%-scholarship business accelerator run by INCAE Business School's Center for Inclusive and Sustainable Leadership, funded by the PriceSmart Foundation and Cargill.

Activities

From October 2022 to June 2023, 40 women leaders of small and medium enterprises received training in management, digitalisation, negotiation and access to finance, paired with mentors, and took part in business-plan rounds in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. A second cohort of 41 businesswomen was selected in 2025.

Results

PriceSmart Foundation's own tracking of the cohort found that 27 of the 40 participating businesses increased monthly sales by an average of 35%, 17 secured new market contracts, and the group created 38 new jobs, two-thirds of them filled by women. Individual cases ranged widely: one participant's monthly sales rose from US$3,200 to US$5,000 (a 56% increase), another's from US$4,000 to US$6,400, and a third's annual sales more than doubled from US$6,000 to US$14,000.

Conclusions

The results come from the funder's and implementer's own reporting rather than an independent evaluation, and the roughly two-thirds of participants who reported sales gains leaves a meaningful minority for whom no improvement was reported — a detail the sources do not explain.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Fully (100%) scholarship-funded by the PriceSmart Foundation and Cargill; total programme budget not disclosed in the sources.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
INCAE Business School's Center for Inclusive and Sustainable Leadership, Individual mentors paired with each participant

Conditions for success

  • 100% scholarship funding removes the cost barrier to participation
  • Combines management, digitalisation, negotiation and access-to-finance training with individual mentoring
  • In-person business-plan rounds held in two cities (Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula)

Common failure modes

  • About one-third of participating businesses reported no sales improvement, a detail the sources do not explain
  • Results are self-reported by the funder/implementer rather than independently verified

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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