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

• South Korea: Training of Two New PI Master Trainers
• South Africa: Completion of STEP S Training Implementation
• Malawi: Institutionalizing the PI Training
• Research: Recent Publication in Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship
• South Africa: STEP Podcasts Pilot Run Successfully Completed

South Korea: Training of Two New PI Master Trainers

Congratulations to Jaemyung (James) Lee (pictured above), formerly of The Asia Foundation, who has helped to train two new PI master trainers in South Korea. Over the past two years, James has worked with Alex E. Glosenberg of Loyola Marymount University to train several women from disadvantaged backgrounds in South Korea who have started the Personal Initiative Women Entrepreneurs' Association (PIWA). PIWA has trained both numerous South Korean women, but also plans to help train North Korean refugees/defectors. PIWA has also published a book including accounts of women and their engagement with PI training. More information on this project can be found here. 

South Africa: Completion of STEP S Training Implementation

As part of the DAAD-funded SDG Partnerships project, the first full implementation round of STEP Sustainability (STEP S) has been successfully completed. In May, the final training was held at the University of Venda (South Africa), following earlier trainings at Mount Kenya University (Kenya) and Godfrey Okoye University (Nigeria). In total, more than 380 students participated.

The results are promising: STEP S trainees identified 29–60% more entrepreneurial opportunities than non-participants. Their entrepreneurial confidence increased by 4–8%, and they planned and carried out significantly more entrepreneurial activities.
The program also fostered a sustainability-oriented mindset. Participants identified 14–39% more sustainable business opportunities and showed a 7–12% increase in sustainable entrepreneurial confidence. They demonstrated greater knowledge of environmental and social sustainability, and more sustainable business practices and behavior.
A unique feature of the project is the adaptation of STEP S for student teachers. Here, the training led to a 10% increase in action-oriented teaching confidence.

We look forward to the next training round starting in the upcoming winter term at Mount Kenya University and Godfrey Okoye University. The University of Venda will join again next year.
 

Malawi: Institutionalizing the PI Training

With our work at Doorways, we strive to create sustainable impact. Building capacity on the ground to sustainably implement evidence-based interventions like the PI training is one way of creating that. To that end, we’re happy to announce the successful completion of two Train-the-Trainer (TTT) workshops to train new trainers for the PI training at the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Corporation (SMEDCO) in Malawi. SMEDCO will include the PI training as a permanent training offering to all SMEs in Malawi. To ensure that new trainers who will join SMEDCO in the future will also be able to deliver high-quality PI training sessions, we qualified current SMEDCO trainers to train and prepare new trainers.
The TTT workshops were a continuation of the Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship Scaling (FInES) project, a project by the Reserve Bank of Malawi and The World Bank. We want to thank all parties involved for making this possible and want to congratulate the new PI trainers who have performed incredibly at the TTT workshops!
 

Research: Recent Publication in Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship

How can we understand the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and training? In their recent article to appear in Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship, Michael M. Gielnik and Alex E. Glosenberg review the entrepreneurship education and training literature of the past 10 years. Based on the review, they present an extended active learning framework that describes the training design core elements, within-training processes, short-term learning outcomes, and long-term impact of effective entrepreneurship education and training. The framework suggests that active learning during training triggers within-training processes that foster learning and ultimately entrepreneurial success. Active learning includes the elements of learner control, exploration and experimentation, feedback, error and mastery orientation, teamwork, as well as coaching and mentoring. The framework provides an integrative and comprehensive overview of the factors that are important to consider in entrepreneurship education and training, and it can be used in research and practice to design and evaluate effective programs.

The article can be found here.

South Africa: STEP Podcasts Pilot Run Successfully Completed

From February to May 2025, we tested a new version of the STEP training in the form of podcasts as an alternative to classroom training with unemployed adults in Sharpeville, South Africa. This project was made possible through a cooperation between Leuphana University, North-West University and the Kitso Information Development Centre, and we thank everyone involved for their commitment and effort!

Over the course of 12 weeks, a total of 67 participants successfully completed one of two interventions: either the traditional 3-hour classroom training facilitated by a STEP trainer or the 30-minute podcast listening sessions. To evaluate the project, we collected data in a mixed-methods approach before, during, and after the interventions. We are now in the process of analyzing the data and are excited to see how the podcast performed in comparison to the STEP training. Our observations during the pilot run indicate that the podcasts were well received and incentivized entrepreneurial action.

We are now planning to roll out the podcasts on a larger scale online and need your help! If you have access to individuals who might be interested in participating in the STEP podcast training, please reach out to Janina.

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

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