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

•  PI training in Burkina Faso
•  Train the Trainer Workshops for STEP in Nigeria
•  Implementation of STEP Sustainability
•  Recent Publication in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
•  Upcoming PI Projects in Malawi and Mozambique

PI training in Burkina Faso

From October to December 2022, 1,671 small scale traders participated in the Personal Initiative training in Burkina Faso. The training was delivered by 13 trainers at 6 sites (Bagre, Banfora, Bittou, Bobo-Dioulasso, Po, and Tenkodogo) over a period of 10 weeks. 59% of the participants were women.

We implemented the project in collaboration with the World Bank and the local implementation partner Maison de l’Entreprise du Burkina Faso (MEBF). The aim was to equip small scale traders (monthly revenue less or equal to 1,250,000 F CFA / 1,860 USD) with an increased proactive mindset. To account for the circumstance that 75% of the participants were illiterate, we developed a version of the PI training that includes a large number of illustrations. Since the technical equipment for power point presentations was not available at the sites, we designed a printed manual for the trainers and distributed detailed working books to the participants.

We had to overcome several challenges over the course of the project, from two military coups right at the beginning of the project and shortly before the training was set to start to frequent power cuts that disrupted our virtual calls. Our collaboration with the team of MEBF proved that the support of an excellent local implementation partner is instrumental in making the project a success and overcoming obstacles. We are now looking forward to evaluating the project success after the short-term survey has been completed. 

Train the Trainer Workshops for STEP in Nigeria

Two Train the Trainer (TTT) workshops were held at Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu (Nigeria) in October 2022, funded by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and coordinated by doorways gGmbH. The goal was to train 15 new trainers to support the STEP trainer team at Godfrey Okoye University. The workshops were a success, resulting in all trainers being honored with official STEP trainer certification, including one trainer, who was also certified as a Master Trainer for the STEP program. With this certification, she is now able to be part of a Master Trainer team to train new trainers for the STEP program.

Since the program has been running at Godfrey Okoye University for more than four years, it has already had a positive impact on many students. And there are plans to bring STEP to Godfrey Okoye Secondary High School and even roll it out across Nigeria – respectively West Africa in the future.

Implementation of STEP Sustainability

The United Nations has identified entrepreneurship as a key factor in achieving its 2030 Agenda, which includes 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) aimed at eliminating poverty and protecting the environment. STEP has shown to be a successful training program to support entrepreneurship, but we decided to take it one step further. To further foster these goals, we have developed a new version of our entrepreneurship training program, called STEP Sustainability (STEP S). Building on the SDGs, this version focuses on promoting the creation of sustainable business ideas that benefit society and the planet.

In the past year(s), we piloted STEP S at the Makerere University Business School and at the University of Limpopo. This year, we ran a successful training at the University of the Western Cape and were impressed with the business ideas that were presented at the closing ceremony in November 2022. Supporting the positive impressions and feedback, our standard analysis showed that the program was equally successful at promoting entrepreneurship as the original STEP program, while also indicating its potential for fostering a deeper understanding of (social and environmental) sustainability and integrating this into the business ideas. Of course, we have also identified areas where we can improve the program and are revising the training materials for next year’s implementation.

Are you also interested in implementing STEP S? Based on the positive results and our developed materials, we are ready to expand STEP S to more institutions and to test long-term effects of this training variant. Feel free to reach out to Michael Gielnik (gielnik@leuphana.de). 

Recent Publication in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

What is the psychology of entrepreneurs and how does the psychology of entrepreneurship help us to understand why some entrepreneurs strive whereas others fail?

In their recent article published in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Michael Frese and Michael Gielnik review the literature on the psychology of entrepreneurship and provide an overview of the most interesting research findings of the last 10 years.

The research findings show that one factor is key to success in entrepreneurship: action. Entrepreneurs who show personal initiative, who make do by using existing resources and available means, and who use bootstrapping strategies to overcome financial constraints are more successful in starting and managing a new business. The article also highlights the cognition, motivation, and emotion underlying entrepreneurial action. Importantly, these factors are not static but dynamic. For example, entrepreneurs’ motivation does not only drive their behavior, but motivation also results from engaging in entrepreneurial action. Accordingly, entrepreneurs become more motivated when they initiate and proceed through the entrepreneurial process.

If you’re interested in learning more, please visit doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055646.

Upcoming PI Projects in Malawi and Mozambique

We are very happy to share the news about two new PI projects with you. Move gGmbH just signed the contract with the GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit / German Agency for International Cooperation) for an upcoming PI project. The PI training in cooperation with the GIZ will be provided to trainees at agriculture schools and young small farmers in contract farming programs in the provinces of Nampula and Sofala in Mozambique and in rural areas in Malawi.

The second new PI project will also be implemented in Mozambique in the regions of Nampula, Tete, Pemba & Maputo in cooperation with the worldbank and the government of Mozambique. This upcoming project will be targeted at 1,000 MSMEs linked upstream (B2B) and 9,000 MSMEs benefiting from consumption linkages (B2C). The training will support both existing businesses and new entrepreneurship, at least half of them will be women-owned/managed. Due to the large number of beneficiaries and training locations move gGmbH will conduct 10 ToTs in the different training locations in the upcoming year. We are very much looking forward to working on these new project that will help us to further improve the Personal Initiative training and adapt the training to the needs of new target groups.

Further Announcements

• We are excited to announce that we are in the process of adapting STEP to a digital version. Accordingly, the STEP team at Leuphana University will soon be welcoming a new colleague. We look forward to this new addition to our team and the enhancements it will bring to the STEP program. Stay tuned for more updates on this development.

We’d love to hear from you! Send your feedback and thoughts to ceed@leuphana.de

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