ASEAN SME Academy 2.0 and BCR Tab Promote Business Continuity and Resilience
Marsha Lee Arnan-Delfinado, University Extension Specialist at the University of the Philippines Institute for Small-Scale Industries (UP ISSI) speaks in the ASEAN SME Academy Business Continuity and Resilience (BCR) Tab Public Outreach Workshop, a one-day workshop designed to commemorate the International MSME Day and to promote the usefulness and benefits of the ASEAN SME Academy 2.0 and the BCR Tab to MSMEs in Cebu City Philippines last June 27, 2023.
Around 200 MSMEs in Cebu City attended the event in-person at the Marco Polo Hotel in Cebu City and 1,000 MSMEs joined virtually via Zoom from the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) seventeen regional offices and MSMEs from Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, and Singapore. Ms. Delfinado’s talk was the in-person version of the micro-videos recorded for the ASEAN SME Academy BCR Tab, which was pre-recorded in Malaysia.
The BCR Tab public outreach officially announced the availability of the one-stop webpage where potential MSMEs and users can access e-learning modules, webinars, communities of practice, curated tools, and resources on business continuity and resilience to equip and support them in future-proofing their business, and to promote the BCR Tab as a networking platform where users may share their learning and training experience with other ASEAN MSMEs through communities of practice.
The ASEAN SME Academy e-learning platform was developed as part of a collaborative effort between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the US_ASEAN Business Council (US-ABC), and the ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (ACCMSME) led by the DTI- Bureau of Small and Medium Enterprise Development (BSMED) and the Philippines Trade Training Center (PTTC). At the core of the Academy is a series of courses for MSMEs provided at no cost by international organizations and member companies of US-ABC. Since 2021, the Academy has been revamped to improve the overall user experience and accessibility of the website. The Academy 2.0 was launched in April 2022. To enhance the resiliency of MSMEs to disruptions, with support from DTI-BSMED and PTTC along with US-ABC, ASEAN-USAID Inclusive Growth in ASEAN through Innovation, Trade and E-commerce (IGNITE) developed new courses for the Academy 2.0, and this new feature is the BCR Tab.
