In October 2008 an EUVETA project management meeting was held. Mr. Zebadiah Moshi (Director General of VETA, Vocational Education and Training Authority, Dar es Salaam) and Mr. Stephen Lazaro Tsoray (Principal of MVTTC, Morogoro Vocational Teachers Training College) from Tanzania and Mr. Peter Tomlinson (ITC-ILO, Turin) from Italy, visited Triodos Facet in Bunnik.

Together with Inge Heetvelt and Joep Vonk, Mr. Stephen Lazaro Tsoray visited 2 Regional Formation Centres (vocational level) and 2 Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands*.

For everybody, it turned out to be very interesting to discover what’s happening in the Netherlands in the field of entrepreneurship education. Remarkable differences with the situation in Tanzania were:
• Entrepreneurship education is not supported by national policy in the Netherlands. Although subsidies are available and provided, every school or institution is free in the way if and what they do. As a result, a great variety in programmes exists.
• The school’s/institution’s initiatives focus on students. There’s no or very limited support for teachers in terms of training and coaching (like in Tanzania and in Indonesia). We have learned from the projects In Tanzania and Indonesia that this training and coaching is crucial for the success of the entire programme. It could be an opportunity for Triodos Facet to offer TOTs and coaching to vocational training centres in the Netherlands.
• The scale of most entrepreneurship education programmes at schools in the Netherlands is very small: a limited number of students, only one discipline, etc.) This situation is very different from Tanzania and Indonesia, where thousands of students (and teachers!) are involved.
• The entrepreneurship education programmes at schools in Tanzania and the Netherlands have in common that there’s still a lot to gain in the field of networking amongst educational institutions and with the business environment. Just a few partnerships exist.
• During the study tour through the Dutch educational entrepreneurship (landscape), Mr. Lazaro experienced a sense of growing pride when becoming aware of the good achievements in Tanzania. And he was right!

Contribution: Inge Heetvelt ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ); [Joep Vonk: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ]
Project: Building capacity for mainstreaming entrepreneurschip in curricula of Vocational Education and Training Institutions in Tanzania (MVTTC/Nuffic; ref. 540)

* ROC Zadhine, Rotterdam (14 Oct); INHOLLAND, The Hague (14 Oct); Hogeschool Rotterdam (15 Oct) and ROC Gooi & Vechtstreek, Hilversum (15 Oct)

The Financial Services Promotion Program for low Income Populations — or PROMIFIN (Programa de Fomento de Servicios Financieros para Poblaciones de Bajos Ingresos) (www.promifin-cosude.org), is a plan financed by the Switzerland Development Agency and by Cooperacion COSUDE, and it is executed by Triodos Facet (www.triodosfacet.nl) with the backstopping of Faceta Central from Guatemala.

The program’s governmental counterparts are the Comision Nacional de la Pequeña, Mediana y Microempresa in Honduras, the Secretaria Tecnica de la Presidencia and the Fondo de Credito Rural in Nicaragua, and the Banco Multisectorial de Inversiones in El Salvador. This program also includes official entities in charge of regulating and supervising micro financing institutions.
In the private sector, the programme works with different financial institutions (banks, NGOs, micro-financing institutions, credit and saving cooperatives, among others) which provide micro financing services, risk assessment, technical assistance for micro-financing institutions, and others. The programme joins activities with institutions aiding on microfinance in Nicaragua and Honduras as well as common interest goals oriented to the promotion of financial services.

Financial Literacy – Education for living
Description of the process. As a result of the rapid emergence of financial services providers, especially in credit related areas, it has been necessary to develop regulations that help to support the demand for financial services, so that all micro financing organizations grow competitively. This type of regulations is indispensable to help to prevent problems related to high-indebting that can arise if the increasing demand for loans augments without control.

People with low income share the same objectives as the rest of individuals; for example the need to live well and to have financial stability for themselves and their families. However, the lack of resources and available options takes them to a state of desperation and inertia quite often. Managing wisely the little money they have access to is a determining factor to satisfy their everyday needs, face emergencies, or take advantage of the opportunities that may come in their way. Generally, poor people have limited access to knowledge and skills that are needed to manage their financial resources effectively.

Financial literacy has a primary objective, to provide knowledge and skills to manage financial resources effectively. When people know about how to take wise financial decisions, it is possible to plan and achieve objectives. So when people outline their objectives and plan how to accomplish them, it is a lot easier to obtain satisfying results.
It is now that the Financial literacy Project sets a very noticeable presence. Financial literacy goes beyond the simple transfer of how to manage income. Another important objectives in the project is to create an attitude that makes people aware of the importance of saving, controlling their spending, managing their debts, and, finally, foster a disciplined management of income and its sources. Saving habits are the foundations of promising investment opportunities that will, eventually, allow improving the living standards of people. They also promote sustainable development of individuals in any society.

In the framework of the MEDA-ETE project a pilot training Israel was held in Jerusalem at the beginning of July. The training was a follow-up to the Training of trainers course that was given in February by Open for Business (Sweden) with support from Triodos Facet, represented by Dieter Kohn and Gerrit Ribbink, the project team leader.

The Open for Business methodology is a highly interactive, fun way of introducing young people to core entrepreneurial principles and developing an entrepreneurial mind-set. The methodology was introduced in Sweden some 8 years ago building upon a similar methodology developed in Canada. Its main promoter and master trainer, Ulla Gredemyr, is the living embodiment of the Open for Business approach, as she is very entrepreneurial, creative and enthusiastic.

The training in Jerusalem targeted two groups of young aspiring entrepreneurs, the first one consisting of 19 students and recent graduates, the second consisting of young unemployed, recently discharged from the military service. The 2-day training focused on the core principles of entrepreneurship, combined with some activities to generate business ideas and on marketing.

The idea is that some of these trainees will subsequently take part in other MATI activities aimed at helping them to set up their own business. Eventually MATI plans to integrate (elements of) the methodology into their own training modules. All trainees responded very positively to the Open for Business approach, despite initial concern that it would not fit in the Israeli context.

So far the Open for Business methodology has been transferred to Jordan, Israel and Turkey, and in all three countries it has been remarkably well received in quite different local contexts and different target groups. It seems that the core principles of entrepreneurship and the interactive Open for Business methodology, which is based on ‘learning-by-doing’, have a universal appeal and applicability.

After all, being an entrepreneur is not about learning business skills in theory, but about doing so in practice, which is the basic idea behind Open for Business.

Contribution: Gerrit Ribbink
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Uri Scharf (MATI) and Gerrit Ribbink (Triodos Facet)

Participants in the training