Steven Garrett on Advocacy Center Support to Rural Companies
I grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Georgia, worked with rural exporters at the U.S. Commercial Service in Houston, Texas, and currently support small- and medium-sized (SME) exporters at the Advocacy Center as they seek to win foreign government contracts across the globe. I know how important every procurement win can be for SMEs, as the prevalent companies within rural regions.
At the Advocacy Center, we work with companies to pursue foreign government contracts when they are competing against foreign firms. Advocacy assistance is provided to businesses of all types and sizes and we aim to support SMEs as they begin and grow their business in foreign locales. Our support, no matter the company size, is to ensure a fair and consistent procurement process is being followed and advocating for all applicable U.S. technology solutions. All applicants follow the same application and qualification in order to receive advocacy services.
The Advocacy Center helps create and retain U.S. jobs through exports. For example, Acrow, an SME with operations in rural Pennsylvania and a long-time client of the U.S. Commercial Service in Northern New Jersey, won a tender with Invest-H, the Honduran governmental agency responsible for infrastructure in Honduras. As part of its project performance, within 90 days Acrow supplied over 600m of bridging (valued at $5.5 Million, 28 US jobs) in support of the Honduran Government’s response to the severe damage caused by Hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Paul Sullivan, President of International Business for Acrow, said: “The Acrow team’s experience with the Advocacy support provided by the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa and its Washington-based colleagues at the Advocacy Center was extraordinarily positive and essential to the success of the project. The USG team’s advocacy helped us understand the local political and economic landscape, connect appropriately with the right stakeholders, and guide our team toward solutions that best suited the local procurement environment.”