Checkers Inc.

Checkers Inc started out as a group of business strategists, IT, and marketing specialists, some 8 years ago, under the name "Porto-Jo Global Consultants".

The group of one business strategist, one IT and digital media specialist, and one marketing strategist from England, alongside friends and other freelancers began working with local businesses and non-profits to enhance their competitive and sustainability capacities against the flood of international organisations and corporations entering the Jordanian marketplace.

Dedicated to the empowerment of local SMEs and NGOs in the face of overwhelming intercontinental, corporate capital, and the challenges domestic and traditional businesses usually deal with in an emergent market like Jordan, we, the members of Porto-Jo, decided to take our endeavours up to the next level.

So many SMEs and NGOs in Jordan are focused domestically. Countless small and medium businesses are owned by young entrepreneurs battling economic slowdown and families who live off their "family businesses".

As Jordan has been carrying out a variety of market "reforms", unprepared and unexpected domestic businesses suddenly found themselves in the face of massive corporations, armed with capital and cut-edge technology, rendering local businesses more or less helpless in the face of change.

Similarly, we have all seen what globalisation does to underdeveloped economies around the world, as well as to the people who drive the simpler, social economy. In Jordan, we are trying to help businesses here compete, survive, and succeed. The tide is rising now and many businesses have been washed ashore; bankrupt.