WorkerTech El Salvador has ended a four-year programme that supported 12 start-ups, reached more than 13,500 self-employed workers with digital services and secured US$1.4 million in impact investment.
The initiative was led by the Salvadoran Chamber of Information and Communication Technologies (CASATIC), IDB Lab and the EU, and began in 2022 to promote technology designed to improve productivity, access to benefits and social protection for self-employed and informal workers, according to the EU Delegation to El Salvador informed on Friday, cited by the European External Action Service (EEAS).
Four innovation challenges were run during the project, each focused on a different group of workers: drivers and riders in 2022, domestic and care workers in 2023, online freelancers in 2024, and self-employed workers aged over 50 in 2025.
The 12 supported WorkerTech start-ups received US$1.4 million in impact investment to scale their services, alongside an incubation programme offering training and mentoring.
Across the four challenges, the project backed services linked to insurance, financial inclusion and credit, training, access to healthcare, productivity and collective organisation.
Policy proposals and safety equipment
The project involved 40 institutions from the private and public sectors, academia and international organisations in a multi-sector dialogue that produced a portfolio of 50 public policy proposals on self-employment, the EU Delegation said.
Three proposals were implemented with government bodies — ISDEMU, FONAT and the Ministry of Labour.
As part of that work, 87 people were trained in caring for older adults in collaboration with ISDEMU.
Separately, 200 helmets and harnesses were distributed to delivery workers in collaboration with FONAT.
A partnership with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security will add statistics on self-employed workers to the labour observatory — an official system for tracking labour market data — and strengthen the team’s ability to collect data on the gig economy.
As a longer-term output, the project helped create Workerlab, an online platform intended to raise the profile of self-employed workers, list available benefits, and collect information on the sector.
A regional WorkerTech Community for Latin America and the Caribbean was launched in April 2024 with more than 15 start-ups from countries including Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.
