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

• Nigeria: STEP Train-the-Trainer Workshop at Godfrey Okoye University
• Rwanda: PI Training for 2,500 Small-Scale Entrepreneurs
• Kenya: Kick-off SDG Partnerships Project at MKU
• Research: Publication in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology
• Overview: Current PI and STEP Training

Nigeria: STEP Train-the-Trainer Workshop at Godfrey Okoye University

As part of the project “Sustainable Entrepreneurship Courses for Under- and Postgraduate Students”, funded by the DAAD from 2024-2027, we conducted a Train-the-Trainer workshop at the Godfrey Okoye University in Enugu, Nigeria from September 23rd to 27th, 2024. The workshop was hosted by the university’s vice chancellor Rev. Prof. Dr. Chistian Anieke and the local project coordinator, Chistopher Chidiebere Uwakwe.

Eleven facilitators were trained in a version of STEP Sustainability for student teachers. In this new version, the STEP training consists of an introductory session, eight training sessions covering content about starting a sustainable business, and three micro-teaching sessions. In these micro-teaching sessions, the student teachers practice being STEP trainers themselves. The aim is to not only foster entrepreneurial action among the training participants, but also to enable them to teach the training to secondary school students after they have completed their studies.

The training is scheduled to start on October 12th and will be completed mid-December. After the roll-out at Godfrey Okoye University, the training concept will be transferred to the Kenyan context at Mount Kenya University next year. We thank everyone involved in this ambitious project for their continuing efforts!

Rwanda: PI Training for 2,500 Small-Scale Entrepreneurs

As Doorways, we are happy to announce that our partner Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners (ESP) is planning to train 2,500 small-scale entrepreneurs in rural Rwanda with the PI training over the next five years. This initiative is part of a large-scale project funded by Mastercard Foundation. To kick off the program, we recently facilitated a Train-the-Trainer workshop and pilot training in Ruhengeri, successfully qualifying 15 new PI trainers. These trainers will now play a crucial role in delivering the training to entrepreneurs across the country, ensuring the program’s reach and impact.

Kenya: Kick-off SDG Partnerships Project at MKU

After we launched the SDG Partnerships project, funded by the DAAD, with a kick-off workshop at Leuphana University in April this year, we could also start the project at our partner university, Mount Kenya University. Within a Train-the-Trainer workshop in July this year, twelve new STEP trainers were successfully trained for the STEP Sustainability training. The training finally started with over 150 students last month and is expected to be completed in November. As part of the training, we are conducting impact studies to determine its effectiveness.

We also conducted the first research workshop at Mount Kenya University as part of the SDG Partnerships Project. More than 50 postgraduates participated in a one-week workshop that covered topics such as developing a research question, introduction to statistics, and publishing research. The following research workshop will occur at our partner university, University of Venda, in 2025.

Research: Recent Publication in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology

How can participants maintain and benefit from what they have learned during action-oriented entrepreneurship training in the long run?

In their recent study published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Michael Gielnik and Carina Bohlayer examined the long-term performance of training participants over a period of one year after completion of the training.

Working with STEP data from Uganda, they found that training participants with high error mastery orientation successfully engaged in entrepreneurial action and created a new venture one year after the training program, whereas participants low in error mastery orientation experienced a short-term boost but ultimately declined in entrepreneurial action and new venture creation in the long run.

Error mastery orientation involves being able to deal with errors, thinking about errors, and learning from errors. Dealing with errors is a critical part of entrepreneurship and necessary to successfully complete the entrepreneurial process. The study underscores the critical role of error mastery orientation for benefitting from action-oriented training programs in the long term.

The study can be found here.

The study was supported by the German Commission for UNESCO, the BASF Stiftung as well as the STEP teams at the Martyrs University Uganda.

Current PI and STEP training

We would like to inform you about current training projects that have been conducted between October 2023 and October 2024. This is the second draft of our rubric, "Current PI and STEP training". Please assist us in creating this new rubric. So please update us on all the STEP and PI training you conduct yourself. We will then add them to our list.

Leuphana | Doorways | Move-ETI

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