Mapping Entrepreneurs' Response to COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean
by Julien Collaer , Cristina NolascoESRI Jobs and Development Social Protection COVID-19
Challenge
The social and economic disruption caused by Covid-19 led to numerous challenges to conduct businesses, provide essential services, and attend to the most basic well-being needs around the globe. This complex scenario brought by the pandemic fostered entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean to provide solutions for education, mental health, logistics, management and many other sectors. However, most of the entrepreneurs’ efforts were decentralized and sometimes disconnected from other initiatives that could attend to diverse necessities from citizens. In response to this problem, IDB Lab members organized and mapped all these businesses' attempts to stimulate collaboration in the region.
Solution
IDB Lab valued these tremendous efforts from small businesses and entrepreneurs and created The Map of LAC Innovators COVID-19, which allows people to explore an interactive map of an open, united, and consolidated database of the diverse startup efforts in the region. The map leverages ESRI ArcGIS online platform (provided by the Data Partnership) to quickly and easily publish the data in a geographic map highlighting the efforts. The authors of the projects also provided access to download the data here.
Impact
The Map aggregates more than 500 business initiatives across Latin America the Caribbean. More than 16 categories were described, cataloging each of the initiatives by themes such as Artificial Intelligence, Behavioral Change, Remote Education, Telemedicine, and many others. The result was an immersive and knowledgeable platform to promote solutions that address the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic, as well as stimulate more collaboration between business and society in the region.
Read more
https://blogs.iadb.org/conocimiento-abierto/en/https://bidlab.org/es/map-LAC-innovators-Covid-19