Center of Evidence-based Entrepreneurship Development (CEED)

Happy New Year and 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!

We would like to share successful STEP and PI implementations twice yearly. In this newsletter, we want to present STEP at Bicol University in the Philippines. If you are interested in also presenting your successful training implementation, please contact us via our CEED e-mail.

Topics of this Newsletter

•  Awards and special honors
•  Burundi: move-eti kicks off with pilot and official project launch
•  Philippines: Implementation of STEP at Bicol University
•  South Africa: Finalization of STEP
•  India: PI Training for Rural Entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu
•  Further Announcements

Awards and special honors

In November, our former PhD student Carina Bohlayer received the prestigious Stöbich Entrepreneurship PhD award. Her award-winning dissertation “Becoming Entrepreneurs - Critical Situations and the Dynamics of Nascent Entrepreneurs' Motivations” provides insights into how motivations and critical situations interact and thus influence the journey of nascent entrepreneurs. The prize is awarded by the Entrepreneurship Hub at Braunschweig University of Technology and Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences in collaboration with Stöbich GmbH & Co. KG.

Furthermore STEP was awarded second place at the Going BEYOND Awards hosted by GBSN. This award honors institutional programs and initiatives that serve communities worldwide. The Going BEYOND Awards emphasize programs that strengthen society, create community impact, and embody the spirit of inclusive and sustainable development. Winning second place out of 54 submissions across 24 countries and 46 institutions underlines the impact of the STEP training. We are very proud to be among the top three submissions at the Going BEYOND Awards and of all the participating STEP teams, as this award also demonstrates their success stories of real change in their local communities.

Burundi: move-eti kicks off with pilot training and official project launch

At the end of the year, in December 2023, the move-eti team travelled to Bujumbura, Burundi, to support the "Projet d'Amélioration des Compétences et Employabilité des Femmes et des Jeunes" with its scientific training interventions. The project, known as PACEJ, is funded by the World Bank and aims to improve the entrepreneurial skills of women and young people in Burundi, as well as refugees, through STEP and PI training. In addition, the STEP training aims to improve the digital skills of the target groups.

The project's pilot trainings allowed the team to test the preliminary training materials with representatives of the actual beneficiaries. The team will use the feedback from the pilot trainings to further adapt the materials and training approach before rolling out the trainings on a larger scale.

As the project will take place in a French-speaking country, move-eti will adapt the names of its training interventions. For this project, the PI training will be called FIP ("Formation à l'initiative personelle") and the STEP training will be called FOPE ("Formation pour la promotion de l'entrepreneurship").

The move-eti team is excited to be working in Burundi and is committed to contributing to the success of PACEJ in 2024!

Philippines: Successful implementation of STEP at Bicol University

Bicol University is a public research university located in the Bicol Region, Philippines, that offers to some 18,000 students, various undergraduate and graduate programs in fields such as agriculture, arts and sciences, business, education, engineering, and technology. STEP was first introduced in 2015 as research aimed at making entrepreneurship a viable career option to students through action-oriented entrepreneurship training. In 2019, STEP was further integrated into the university-wide general elective, "Entrepreneurial Mind" and to date has benefitted approximately 20,000 students with over 200 rounds of trainings. Among its most notable graduates are the founders of tech startups Andale’ and Roompal. The success of STEP in Bicol University can be attributed not only to the consistent training and re-training of trainers but mostly to its contextualization to the Philippine setting. This contextualization, while staying committed to STEP’s content and training approach has led to its implementation to community service projects such as the iFWD and iWomen Entrepreneurial Trainings.  Both funded by the Department of Science and Technology, the projects have capacitated and made fundable over 50 microentrepreneurs throughout the region – evidence of how STEP is the action-oriented entrepreneurship training that not just Bicolanos but Filipinos could leverage for inclusivity and sustainability.

If you are interested in further information on this STEP success story, please contact Ma. Crestia C. Bañares.

South Africa: Successful finalization of STEP

In 2018, we first introduced STEP to South Africa in a project funded by the German Commission for UNESCO and the BASF Foundation. Five years later, we have implemented STEP and STEP Sustainability at the University of Limpopo, University of Venda, and University of the Western Cape. All universities have taken full ownership of the training and will continue running the program even after the project funding ends. Over the course of the project, we have trained two master trainers, Jimmy Mohale and Tendayi Gondo, and three more people are currently on the road to becoming master trainers. With the support of the universities, we were also able to expand the project beyond the borders of South Africa. In July 2023, lecturers from Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia, and Namibia participated in a Train-the-Trainer (TTT) workshop and became certified STEP trainers. They are currently conducting pilot projects at their institutions. In November 2023, we hosted another TTT for six participants from Zimbabwe and also trained 3 lecturers from the North West University, who will become the fourth university in South Africa to implement STEP from March 2024 onwards. Two additional TTTs are planned at the North West University and in Malawi in February 2024.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved. We are amazed by this progress and the ongoing efforts by all project partners to develop and implement local variants of STEP.

India: PI Training for Rural Entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu

Together with The World Bank’s South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab and the local implementation partner Hand In Hand India, we as Doorways are conducting a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to investigate the impact of the PI Training on rural entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu. The RCT is embedded within the aims of the World Bank operation Vazhndhu Kattuvom / Tamil Nadu Rural Transformation Project (TNRTP). The TNRTP project aims at rural transformation through strategies that focus beyond poverty alleviation by building sustainability and prosperity of rural communities through enterprise promotion, access to finance, and employment opportunities. After a thorough adaptation of the training materials to the local context, a pilot training, and a Train-the-Trainer workshop, the larger roll-out of the PI Training is set to commence in February 2024. We are very happy and grateful for the continuous support of all stakeholders and their commitment to provide the best possible version of the PI Training to the 1,000 participants of the project.

Further Announcements

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

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

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