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)