ILAN now has a presence in two Central American countries, Guatemala and Costa Rica, and these in turn join Israel, the United States and Mexico. The ILAN Foundation committee is recognized and supported by the Embassy of Israel in Guatemala, which will work hand in hand with the Santa Mónica Institute of Innovation, to generate and promote social impact projects in the country.
The foundation has the purpose of helping to change lives in Latin America, and this time it focuses on Guatemala as a country with a wide area of opportunities in innovation due to the fact that academic centers and institutions carry out research and studies for the development of the Therefore, attention must be paid to promoting and strengthening these connection networks to continue contributing to the growth of the nation.
Isaac Assa, founder and president of ILAN, visited the country to establish, with Guatemalan businessmen, diplomats and academics, the ILAN Guatemala Foundation. “We are pleased to inaugurate the headquarters in the first country in Central America, Guatemala historically since the famous UN vote in 1948 and the recent return of its embassy to Jerusalem, shows why Israel classifies it as a brother.”
ILAN initiatives have a link that strengthens the ties of Latin America and Israel. They detect people and companies that have the talent and potential to generate high-impact projects, discover extraordinary opportunities and ideas, which land for them to be put into practice through alliances with a wide network of contacts, leaders and decision makers who are looking for solutions to make these projects work.
“Latin America has great innovators who unfortunately have not been recognized, in Guatemala we have many young people with hidden talents who want to work, they fight every day innovating in their communities and learning with enthusiasm, the best universities in Guatemala have future professionals”, commented Mario Nathusius member of the ILAN Guatemala committee.
The projects to be worked on by ILAN are divided into seven categories: education, health & science, communication, environment, technology, social transformation and peace.
“To talk about Israel and its people is to talk about innovation at its best, they have shown that with technology it is possible to improve the lives of millions of people. Israel is one of the most dynamic incubators of science that humanity has seen, it is an excellent example that investment in technology and innovation is highly profitable”, said Ana Chan, national secretary of science and technology.
The Israel Latin-American Network (ILAN) foundation was inspired by the vision of the former president of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shimón Peres, who said that through innovation we can improve people’s lives. In his mandate, Israel was a country blessed with nothingness and thanks to that they had to develop their capacity to innovate in order to become the country that it is today: in the last 30 years it has quintupled its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by going from US$110 billion to more than US$500 billion, a GDP per capita of US$14 thousand to more than US$50 thousand.
