VOA 常速 - 国际开发署鼓励创业精神

The administration of President Barack Obama believes that if our neighbors prosper, then sowill the United States. First, we must take on poverty, by creating jobs and improvingeconomies.

And because entrepreneurship is a key driver of economic growth, job creation and innovation,the United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, haslaunched a new initiative to boost those who would launch new enterprises-- Partnering toAccelerate Entrepreneurship, or PACE.

The idea is to step in and help where a small extra push could make the difference to thesuccess of enterprises, be it through catalyzing private investment, encouraging innovation orhelping to develop sustainable approaches in the development of new enterprises.

Some 400 million people work as entrepreneurs around the world. Nonetheless,entrepreneurship has not reached its full potential in most developing countries. This is largelydue to gaps in the entrepreneurial ecosystem within these countries, roadblocks that mayprevent entrepreneurs from access to financial resources, expertise and advisory support,along with networks needed to start a new venture, help them try out and refine theirbusiness models, and offer support so they may grow.

One area PACE can help is in the so-called “pioneer gap”, where early-stage enterprises cite alack of access to finance as a key challenge; investors cite a lack of investment-readyenterprises, which leads to a concentration of investment funding in older enterprises withproven records, while new, often highly promising enterprises in need of funding, go begging.Here, PACE plans to help evaluate entrepreneurial models to help potential investors anddonors better see the value of investing in specific early-stage enterprises.

Finally, PACE plans to focus on incubating start-up enterprises in underserved areas, bothgeographic and within specific industries or market sectors, such as for example food security,global health and energy access.

“In the last 20 years alone, human ingenuity and entrepreneurship around the world havereduced child mortality rates by 42 percent and poverty rates by 48 percent—lifting over 600million people above the dollar-and-a-quarter poverty line,” said USAID Administrator, Dr.Rajiv Shah.

Through programs like PACE, we hope to continue advancing global prosperity.

巴拉克·奥巴马政府认为如果邻国繁荣了，那么美国也会繁荣的。首先，我们必须通过创造就业和发展经济来解决贫困问题。

由于创业精神是经济发展、创造就业和创新的关键推动力，美国通过国际开发署(USAID)发起新计划“合作加速创业行动计划”(PACE)来鼓励创业者。

其构想是对那些只要一点额外推动力就能对创业成功起到大作用的地方提供帮助，或者是通过促进私人投资、鼓励创新，或新企业发展中促进可持续途径的开发。

全世界约有4亿自主创业者，然而，在大多数发展中国家，创业精神没有得到充分挖掘。这在很大程度上归咎于这些国家内的创业生态系统的缺口，以及可能阻碍企业家获得资金支持、专业知识、咨询支持、以及建立新企业所需网络方面的障碍，我们需要帮助他们尝试并改善商业模式，提供支持帮助他们发展。

PACE所能提供的一个帮助就是对所谓的“先锋断层”，即处于早期阶段的企业缺少资金，这是个关键的难题，投资者会缺少立即可供投资的企业，这样会导致投资集中于那些记录良好的老企业，而新的、通常前景好的企业会缺少资金，只得乞求帮助。因此，PACE计划帮助评估创业模式，以帮助潜在投资者和捐赠者更好地看清某些起初阶段企业的投资价值。

最后，PACE还计划关注服务匮乏地区的孵化期创业企业，无论是地理层面，还是专门行业或市场领域，比如食品安全、全球健康和能源获得。

美国国际开发署署长拉吉夫·沙赫说，“单单是过去20年间，全世界人类的创新和创业精神使得儿童死亡率降低了42%，使得贫困率降低了48%，帮助6亿多人越过了1.25美元的贫困线。”

我们希望通过PACE这样的项目来继续推进全球繁荣。