Center of Evidence-based Entrepreneurship Development (CEED)

Welcome to the CEED newsletter, covering the latest news on the Student Training for Entrepreneurial Promotion (STEP) and Personal Initiative (PI) Training!

This newsletter informs you on a quarterly basis about current events, projects, and the implementation of both our training programs STEP and PI. On top of sharing news from our side, we would like to encourage you to contribute to this newsletter so that we can establish it as a medium for mutual updates. Because just like us, you’re gaining valuable experiences with the training programs. In fact, you run great projects that always amaze us and that the whole community should know about! Therefore, please don’t hesitate to reach out and send us updates on what you are doing as well as news to share to ceed@leuphana.de.

Topics of this Newsletter

• Tajikistan: First PI Training in Central Asia
• Niger: Developing a Personal Initiative Program
• Nigeria: STEP at the Center of Practical Skills
• Germany: STEP – Creative and innovative business ideas
• Uganda: PI Train-the-Trainer Workshops

Tajikistan: First PI Training in Central Asia

We’re excited to share that our trainings have now also reached Central Asia! In a pilot project together with a Japanese NGO (IMG Partners), we have trained four trainers from different regions in Tajikistan to deliver a shortened version of the PI training to female small-scale business owners.

The Train-the-Trainer workshop was delivered in Duschanbe, Tajikistan from February 22^nd - 24^th and the pilot training is currently being conducted in three provinces of Tajikistan to a small group of female entrepreneurs. Working together with a Tajik Incubator (State Business Incubator) that was established in a project funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the motivated team of trainers is now delivering the training to at least 60 female entrepreneurs – with more to come in the future.

The PI training in Tajikistan is our first training in Cental Asia, a part of the world that, given the high rates of unemployment and the difficulties in economic development, can highly benefit from evidence-based entrepreneurship interventions. It is also our first training delivered in Russia. Stay tuned for the development of our trainings in Central Asia!

Niger: Developing a Personal Initiative Program

As part of the Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend (SWEDD) program in Niger, we are currently developing a Personal Initiative training in cooperation with The World Bank’s Africa Region Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) and our local implementation partner CESAM. The training will be targeted at 1,000 young women between the ages of 15 to 24. All women are part of the Safe Spaces where they take part in other empowerment programs that cover topics such as self-esteem, prevention of gender-based violence, health management, and finances. By participating in the PI training, the women will be encouraged to take another step towards independence and equality.

The project started with a mini-pilot from March 21^st - 25^th. Since some of the participants do not own a business, we will use the approach of the STEP training and ask them to start their own business activity at the beginning of the training. In addition, the training materials are designed in a way that also illiterates can actively participate. A notable addition to the curriculum is that we developed the case study of Mariam, a local young woman who starts and manages her own sustainable micro-business over the course of all training sessions. The case study is accompanied by a large number of illustrations and was very well received by the participants of the mini-pilot. Taking into account the feedback received during the mini-pilot to make the first adjustments to the curriculum, a pilot training will take place in April. The actual training is scheduled to start in June and will run over a course of three months.

Nigeria: STEP at the Center of Practical Skills

In October 2018, the STEP program was introduced and implemented for the first time in Godfrey Okoye University (GOUNI) Enugu, Nigeria. So far, the program has been successfully implemented across four years in the university and has empowered and graduated over 100 student business groups and at least 50 Alumni registered business groups. Currently, the STEP program is being implemented by the GOUNI-Directorate of Entrepreneurship at the Centre of Practical Skills (CoPS) under the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), Enugu Nigeria. Thanks to the new batch of STEP trainers who were added to the fold from October 2022 Train-the-Trainer workshops.

The objective of the current program is to integrate STEP into the ICMPD-CoPS which will build a holistic and sustainable empowerment of trainees in a vocational training environment to change from job seeker to job creator. In the next eleven weeks, 96 students from the departments of electrical installation, plumbing and masonry will undergo hands on and evidence-based entrepreneurship training – STEP. The trainees will learn how to start and run real businesses by combining knowledge, skills, confidence and other resources for the purpose of identifying and exploiting business opportunities.

Germany: STEP – Creative and innovative business ideas

The STEP run 22/23 in Germany concluded in January, encompassing both online and in-person training sessions to gain more experience teaching STEP. Interestingly, the online version garnered a more consistent level of participation and a lower dropout rate than its in-person training counterpart. 34 participants (online and in-presence class) successfully obtained their certification. Throughout the training, an array of creative and innovative ideas was generated, ranging from a knitting box for expectant mothers to 3D printed and recyclable laptop stands. These concepts demonstrate the depth of creativity and problem-solving skills that the STEP program cultivates in its participants.

The next STEP run in Germany has already started with a Kick-off session last week (April 5^th), and will be conducted solely online. This shift to digital instruction will allow more students to participate in the training, thus expanding the program's reach and impact in the Hamburg metropolitan region.

What's more, participants in the upcoming run will have the opportunity to engage with the newly created sustainability variant of the STEP training. This initiative reflects the program's commitment to addressing the pressing challenges of our time, such as climate change and resource depletion, through entrepreneurship and innovation.

Uganda: PI Train-the-Trainer Workshops

We are very happy to announce the successful implementation of a PI Train-the-Trainer Workshop in the two Ugandan cities Kampala and Arua. This is a collaborative project between move Entrepreneurship Training Institute gGmbH and the two Ugandan NGOs Youth Social Advocacy Team (YSAT) and African Youth Action Network (AYAN) with the support of MasterCard Foundation. Eleven trainers have successfully completed the workshop and have started training refugees in two refugee camps in Uganda in the beginning of the year. Two Quality control assistants that have also been trained by move gGmbH are monitoring the training and evaluate the trainers during the training of participants. This is a first pilot project to offer the PI training to refugees in Uganda and will be accompanied by a qualitative evaluation. We are very much looking forward to receiving the results that will help us to further improve the Personal Initiative training for refugees and to successfully provide the PI training to more entrepreneurs in additional cities and refugee camps in the future.

Further Announcements

•  For further informations on the Center of Evidence Based Entrepreneurship Development, past succes stories and the most important publications, please visit the Website of CEED.

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