Training in Wolaita Sodo Ethiopia: Women in Business!

Over the last year, the Wolaita Sodo TVET College staff is equipped in fostering small business development skills of female trainees in the SNPRRS area in Ethiopia. This was done as part of the TMT Project ‘Training programme to build a gender-responsive agricultural vocational training system and promoting female entrepreneurship’ with the aim to strengthen capacity among Wolaita Sodo staff to be able to train and support female students and community members on this topic.

Girls and women and entrepreneurship in Ethiopia

Although some female owned businesses emerge in urban areas, this is not the case in rural areas, where the focus is on the agricultural sector. It is not easy for girls/women to start their own business in Ethiopia, due to various reasons. In previous project training weeks, the focus was on identifying the reasons for the position of girls and women in the labour market. By conducting a value chain analysis the challenges in common agricultural value chains in Ethiopia and their improvement points were identified in the first project training. In training two, improvement of gender policies in TVET institutions was discussed, specifically applicable for Wolaita Sodo TVET as example college.

The third training was based on the prior project findings and focused on mitigating the gender gap in labour market opportunities and general inequality. How? By fostering entrepreneurship amongst girls and women! This was done interactively in a practical business challenge week, in which staff members of Wolaita Sodo TVET set up their own businesses in small groups (read all about it here)! In order to create a realistic and appropriate entrepreneurship curriculum, the teachers have undergone the process of business incubation themselves, as if they were students. This included lots of practical market and consumer research, a feasilibitly study and the basics of business finance. Very interactive, however: how to implement this at the college was still a challenge upon completion of the training week. Therefore: this week our colleagues Feline and Lisa went back to Wolaita Sodo TVET for the final step: implementation of the best practices at the college. What better way to do this then facilitating a business incubation training for selected Wolaita Sodo TVET students by the teachers themselves?!

Training week 4: Women in Business!

The business challenge setup used in the previous training was repeated in this last training of the project. This meant the teachers were familiar with the content and overall approach. An extra element was added: guidance and personal development. As teacher, one should not only be able facilitate the course in terms of theory but one has to be able to guide and coach students along the way. Therefore, the trainers guided the teachers in guiding the students in startup development. As coaching tool, the MBTI personality tool was used. Different character traits were discussed comprehensively, including personal strengths and weaknesses and how to overcome and improve them.

After a first training day full of MBTI and a recap on the BMC theory with the teachers only, selected Wolaita Sodo TVET students joined the training from day 2 onwards. The setup was similar: students set up a business from scratch using the BMC, although this time the teachers joined the student groups to coach them along the way.

Therefore, teachers gained firsthand, practical experience in student coaching on-the-job. This included consumer research in the market and upon request of the participants training needs: two interesting guest lectures were given by Ethiopian experts on female entrepreneurship and access to finance.

The week’ s closure was a pitch contest by the students to showcase their business ideas. Their ideas ranged from an egg production business to a beauty salon for students to indigenous flower production. What a creativity amongst the students!

After gaining knowledge and experience themselves and facilitating a business challenge for students, the staff members of Wolaita Sodo consider themselves as business incubation experts and are ready to implement their lessons learned in the college!

Thanks to the participants for the active participation in this inspiring week and thank you to Wolaita Sodo ATVET, NUFFIC, Yess Ethiopia and Gender2Connect for the great collaboration. Looking forward to continuing working together in the future!