Dear Members,
 
I am pleased to announce and invite you to be a sponsor for the Council’s longstanding and flagship initiative, the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Program. Since 2012, our SME program has impacted more than 30,000 ASEAN small business owners and executives through our capacity-building activities. This program includes the ASEAN SME Academy (the Academy), an online training platform that provides free and centralized access to global and regional/country-specific training resources from leading US companies. We will also continue our ongoing initiatives such as the SME Workshop Series and US-ASEAN SME Community. Additionally, we plan to introduce brand new programs, US-ASEAN SME Podcast and the US-ASEAN SME Symposium.

In 2023, the Council will continue to develop impactful capacity-building activities to accelerate SMEs' resiliency. Our main objective is to provide a comprehensive program to empower ASEAN MSMEs by leveraging the digital economy. The program will focus on six main activities:

US-ASEAN SME Symposium
The Council is pleased to introduce the next phase in empowering ASEAN SMEs through an inaugural US-ASEAN SME Symposium this year, especially as 2023 marks Indonesia's Chairmanship of ASEAN. The Symposium is a one-day event that will convene ASEAN governments, key business leaders, academics, and SMEs to discuss strategies for transforming SMEs to adapt amid the ever-changing business landscape and gain competitive advantage with innovation under the theme of “Enriching Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.” We will provide a separate concept note and sponsorship for this program.