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!

If you want to contribute, please contact us via our CEED e-mail. 

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!

Topics of this Newsletter

• Germany: Kick-off Workshop at Leuphana University 
• Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia: PI Training as Part of the TFWA Program
• Southern Africa: Roll-outs of Multiple STEP Programs
• Ivory Coast: PI Train-the-Trainer Workshop in Yamoussoukro
• Kenya and Germany: Becoming a PI Trainer Remotely

Germany: Kick-off Workshop at Leuphana University

We are delighted to announce the commencement of our joint SDG-Partnerships project, funded by the DAAD – German Academic Exchange Service, in collaboration with our esteemed partners from Godfrey Okoye University (Nigeria), Mount Kenya University (Kenya), and the University of Venda (South Africa). The kick-off workshop week from April 22nd to 26th, 2024 at Leuphana was a significant milestone, where we collectively laid the foundation for the next four years of our project. Together, we aim to develop and implement our STEP Sustainability training for undergraduates, postgraduates, and secondary school students, integrating it into the curricula of our partner universities. We have also outlined our research plans and established a clear timeline for the project.

For further information on the project, please contact Janina Peschmann or Paul Herrmann.

Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia: PI Training as Part of the TFWA Program

As Doorways, we are pleased to announce that we will be conducting two new PI training projects in both Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia.

The training implementations target small-scale cross-border traders and are part of the Trade Facilitation West Africa (TFWA) Program, which is an initiative driven by multiple development partners (USAID, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, EU, and GMZ) to improve trade facilitation in West Africa. The program is managed by the World Bank and GIZ with strategic oversight and guidance provided by a Steering Committee, chaired by the ECOWAS Commission and supported by the UEMOA Commission as deputy chair. We're excited to build on the experiences made during the PI training as part of the TFWA Program in Burkina Faso, for which early RCT results indicate strong significant effects of the training on business outcomes comparable to the results of the PI training in Togo (see Campos et al., 2017).

The projects in Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia are set to kick-off with field visits to meet our local partner organizations InnovaLab in Guinea-Bissau and GYIN in The Gambia and other relevant stakeholders. The training implementation will be conducted with our local partners this fall.

Stay tuned for further updates!

Southern Africa: Roll-out of Multiple STEP Programs

The North-West University in South Africa (NWU) conducted Train-the-Trainer (TTT) workshops in February (supported by South African master trainers) and June (supported virtually by master trainers from Leuphana University). In total, they now have 24 qualified STEP trainers and are rolling out the training at three of their campuses. In addition, Leonie Greyling and Johann Landsberg from NWU have completed their journey toward becoming STEP master trainers. Future research collaborations between NWU and Leuphana University are planned.

Moreover, participants from the TTT in Malawi in February have rolled out pilot projects. Until now, in total, 140 students have been trained at three institutions in Zambia and around 40 students in Malawi. Our focal point in Zambia, Mukwalikuli Mundia, has established a collaboration with a local government program and plans to roll out STEP to community members.

We are very impressed by the ongoing effort of all our partner institutions to provide STEP to as many participants as possible, especially considering that all of the mentioned institutions have implemented STEP with their own funding!

Ivory Coast: PI Train-the-Trainer Workshop in Yamoussoukro

We are excited to announce that Mona Hafner and Elisabeth Kuria, PhD students at Leuphana University and active project managers and master trainers for move Entrepreneurship Training Institute, represented the Frese Group by launching a Train-the-Trainer workshop for PI training on June 24th in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast. This two-week workshop aims to enhance the skills of local trainers, enabling them to deliver the PI training to agro-entrepreneurs. Additionally, the workshop initiates the training of two new master trainers from the project partners Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners (ESP).

This initiative is part of the OCIAC (Orange Corners Incubation and Acceleration Component) project. The OCIAC program funds entrepreneurship training programs for young entrepreneurs, aged 18 to 35, across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It supports organizations in implementing training programs and provides participants with the necessary resources to start their businesses, while also raising awareness of entrepreneurial potential and strengthening organizational capacities.

Kenya and Germany: Becoming a PI Trainer Remotely

The PI Train-the-Trainer (TTT) workshops can now be completed remotely. In order to give interested candidates the opportunity to become an official PI trainer remotely, a new process has been developed and recently piloted. The remote training encompasses four steps: application, knowledge test, self-organized “Mini PI Training” (including the evaluation by PI master trainers), and feedback from the candidates to improve the PI training.

Caroline Sitienei, a researcher at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology in Kenya, is the first PI trainer to successfully complete the PI TTT remotely. According to Caroline, the remote training was very beneficial, with a high degree of flexibility standing out: “The remote training was flexible, I would do it during my own time, so it gave me room to organize myself, to fit into my schedule … [and] I was able to organize my training according to the needs and schedules of the participants”.

We are pleased to report that the pilot remote PI TTT has been a success. However, as the remote training process is still in its early stages, we look forward to continually expanding and improving it.

For further information, please contact Tabea Brüning.

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

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