I have a project which aims at training youth in paint and soap making productive business. The name of the project is Youths Creative Movement of Sierra Leone, west Africa. Our project trains community-based youth in paint and soap making, who are expected to establish their own enterprise, be our selling agents, or get employment elsewhere after being well trained and qualified.

The youth creative movement is an indigenous independent and non-governmental organization, specially developed to alleviate the excess poverty in our community. By promoting the social and economic powers of our youths–who are the active body of our society and 60% of the country’s total population–by providing them training courses in trades that will create jobs and self–employment for self-reliance and self–sufficiency, e.g. paint making, soap making. The movement is born from the global advocacy on poverty alleviation and the need to promote the living standards of our community youths.

Continue reading ‘Youth Creative Movement in Sierra Leone’ »

Russia – A CIPE partner, the Chechen Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has secured a commitment this month from the Republic of Chechnya to help support a USAID-funded project that trains local youth to launch businesses and expand their employment opportunities. The Chechen government’s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is pledging the ruble equivalent of $21,000 this year to support the most promising of those entrepreneurs who complete the program planned for this summer. Under the terms of the agreement, the aid will take the form of start-up credit or access to a business incubator. Under the three-year Promoting Entrepreneurship in the North Caucasus project, four other chambers of commerce in the region are in the process of winning similar detailed commitments.

Continue reading ‘CIPE Entrepreneurship Update’ »

The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the Kurdistan Economic Development Organization (KEDO) implemented training workshops in Kurdistan in 2008 to assist would-be entrepreneurs with the skills needed to start their own businesses. Two of those trained were Mr. Ayob Abdulkadir Ahmed and Mr. Hazad Omar. Before attending the training program both held menial jobs and thought the Iraqi government should be the one providing them with jobs and wages. As you can see from this video, both developed successful businesses after the CIPE/KEDO training program.

Between the two of them, they have created 21 new jobs in the Kurdish region, Mr. Hazad by selling children’s clothes and Mr. Abdulkadir by running greenhouses to enhance produce growth. They pay above average wages to their workers and have learned to grow their profits.

Continue reading ‘Changing Mindsets in Kurdistan Through Entrepreneurship Training’ »

For the first time in history, Global Entrepreneurship Week activities were celebrated throughout Kyrgyzstan. The Bishkek Business Club and the Central Asian Free Market Institute, along with several other partner organizations throughout the Kyrgyz Republic, organized a series of activities, lectures, and training sessions to promote and inspire entrepreneurship in youth. Despite being in its infancy, Global Entrepreneurship Week – Kyrgyzstan was a huge success garnering support from a variety of entities.

An unofficial opening event kicking off the week’s activities was attended by more than 50 individuals and featured high profile speakers including the Minister of Economic Regulation, Emil Umetaliev and local entrepreneur Azis Abakirov. Representatives from both BBC and CAFMI spoke about the various events of the week and announced a slogan contest. The individuals with the best slogans were awarded books on economics and entrepreneurship. Some of the winning slogans include: Continue reading ‘As a First Time Participant in Global Entrepreneurship Week, Kyrgyzstan Experiences Many Successes’ »

Turin, Italy, 21 June – 2 July, 2010

The third edition of the ILO’s Sustainable Enterprise Academy provides participants with a unique overview of existing tools and knowledge about sustainable enterprise development.  This year the Academy has a special focus on youth entrepreneurship and strategies for governments and donor agencies to tackle the problem of creating new jobs.

Visit the academy’s web page: www.itcilo.org/enterpriseacademy

Register online: enterpriseacademy.itcilo.org/en/how-to-apply

Continue reading ‘ILO’s Summer Academy on Sustainable Enterprise Development’ »

The Peruvian think tank Instituto Invertir launched LíderAcción, a leadership and entrepreneurship program for university students from rural Peru. This program, now in its second year, has had a tremendous impact on improving the youth’s perceptions of a market economy and democracy. The program also helped students to achieve their dream of starting their own businesses. Working in groups, students developed 47 business plans for community development projects. Of these plans, a total of 12 businesses are currently in operation, and 5 more are in the start-up process. After completing the program, students have been encouraged to stay active by taking their knowledge and experience back to their home communities.

See the video on CIPE Development Blog.

See the winning 2008 business plan (in Spanish).

To share an item with the Community of Young Entrepreneurs, send it to partners@cipe.org.

Interestingly, the most recent projects in the area of youth entrepreneurship have been initiated at an academic level. One of these initiatives is the “Entrepreneur Factory”, a program that has been developed by the Career Center, a Romanian organization aiming to help students and recent graduates to start a career.

The rationale behind this program is that well trained entrepreneurs will be client-oriented and will aim to achieve excellence in their fields. Subsequently, they will expect their employees and coworkers to exhibit the same type of attitude, thereby contributing to the dissemination of best practices on a larger scale, as well as the promotion of professionalism. At the same time, they will contribute to the development of a sustainable and creative business environment that can only benefit the entire Romanian society. Continue reading ‘The Entrepreneur Factory’ »

There is no doubt that the issue of youth entrepreneurship has been attracting attention from the media, as well as various national and international NGOs. The novelty is that it is now in the limelight from an academic point of view: two Romanian universities (Titu Maiorescu University, Bucharest, and “Politehnica” University, Bucharest) have joined hands with the Institute for Entrepreneurship at the University for Applied Sciences (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), in their efforts to promote entrepreneurship among students.

The project — “Young entrepreneurs in Europe. Promoting entrepreneurial culture and developing entrepreneurial skills among students from private and public universities in Bucharest, through transnational partnership” — was initiated in October 2009 and will last 18 months. Throughout this period, the project will receive funding from the European Social Fund, through the program “Invest in people!”, which aims to develop human resources in the timeframe 2007-2013. Continue reading ‘Universities Engage in Promoting Romanian Students’ Entrepreneurial Skills’ »

The Bishkek Business Club (BBC) is building rural youth business capacity through business student volunteerism in the Kyrgyz Republic aimed at raising the potential of rural youngsters for starting and developing their own businesses according to the principles of free market and transparent socially responsible entrepreneurship.

The experience obtained by BBC from the work with rural youth during the last-years’ projects proves that educative and communicative programs based on volunteerism and implemented by the non-for-profit organizations are well known and highly appreciated by the rural youth itself because such initiatives are supposed to give opportunities for self development, to some extent encourage youth’s enthusiasm about staying inside the country and stimulate their social activeness by giving them an idea that the future of the country depends on them. Continue reading ‘Engagement of Rural Youth in Small Business Development, Kyrgyzstan’ »