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. Leveraging the Scale of the ASEAN SME Academy 2.0 Since relaunched in 2022, the Academy aimed to be a world-class, user-friendly, and attractive platform. The new features include: a) Multilanguage support, b) New visual design that is mobile friendly, c) Top online resources for SMEs, d) Certifications. This year, we aim to have more various learning resources and translate the materials into ASEAN local languages such as Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Thai, Vietnamese, and others. SME Workshop Series: Building Resiliency for ASEAN SMEs The Council will continue its flagship capacity-building programs which will be conducted in hybrid format. The workshop will be platforms for policy updates and related discussion, public service announcements, and training sessions from member companies. They will enable SMEs and government officials to observe and participate in the Council members' ongoing SME training initiatives. We plan to execute up to five webinars in 2023. ​ US-ASEAN SME Community A forum for ASEAN SMEs to build social and business networks as well as exchange information. We will focus on expanding and leveraging the reach of the facilitator within the platform. We will also invite member companies to participate as facilitators. Moreover, member companies will have the opportunity to build a dedicated “digital community” as a platform to reaching and engaging with the SMEs directly. US-ASEAN SME Podcast A podcast for ASEAN SMEs that will cover various topics on entrepreneurial strategy, the latest technology, updates on new regional and/or country policy for small businesses, and business insights. Newsletter and Promotion A quarterly newsletter highlighting recent ASEAN SME Academy program activities and companies’ contributions will be produced. Content will also include the promotion of course listings, company profiles, upcoming events, and success stories via the Council and ASEAN SME Academy website and social media. Please see the attached 2023 SME Work Plan for your perusal and I encourage you to take advantage of this exciting initiative. We also provided more information about each of the initiatives in the document. This will be a valuable opportunity to help lead our efforts to engage the critical and large SME sector in Southeast Asia and support our engagements at the ASEAN regional and country level. Moreover, in order to build a more sustainable program to deepen our commitment to ASEAN, we seek a three-year financial commitment to support this initiative.          I welcome any feedback on how to ensure these initiatives are impactful and in line with your priorities. Please email me at tosius@usasean.org and copying Nugraheni Utami at utami@usasean.org with any questions and hopefully confirmation of your interest before COB March 10, 2023. We will follow-up with you with more information and the next steps. Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to hearing from you and to hopefully working together to continue providing valuable support to the SMEs in Southeast Asia.  Best regards,   Ted Osius Ambassador (ret.) President & CEO