A CALL FOR GOOD PRACTICE TRAINING FOR YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ACCESS TO FINANCE

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Terence Gregory
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1 A CALL FOR GOOD PRACTICE TRAINING FOR YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ACCESS TO FINANCE 6 February

2 THE ICC WORLD CHAMBERS FEDERATION ICC World Chambers Federation is a unique and truly global forum uniting the global network of more than 12,000 chambers from every country around the world. WCF facilitates the exchange of best practice and fosters the development of new global products and services for chambers; as well as fostering international partnerships between chambers and other stakeholders, in helping their local businesses grow. WCF was established by ICC in 1951 as the International Bureau of Chambers of Commerce (IBCC). THE TORINO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE The Torino Chamber of Commerce is a public institution that represents 231,000 companies and aims at developing the local economy through effective interventions. It promotes local excellence abroad and generates business opportunities through a number of activities, like encouraging business relations at home and abroad, fostering technological innovation, providing information and specific training to companies, setting up new and targeted services, and organizing important events for the economic and social development of Torino and its area. THE EUROPEAN TRAINING FOUNDATION Based in Turin, the European Training Foundation (ETF) is the EU s specialist agency supporting human capital developments in 30 partner countries neighbouring the EU bloc. Promotion of entrepreneurship, and in particular training, is one of ETF s priority development areas, considered key to promoting employment and competitiveness. The ETF works closely with partner country governments, Chambers of Commerce, employers organisations and civic interest groups in promoting entrepreneurship through education and training. Particular emphasis is given to building policy frameworks and good practice sharing and promotion. THE 9 TH WORLD CHAMBERS CONGRESS The World Chambers Congress is organized by the ICC World Chambers Federation. Held every two years in a different region of the world, the Congress is the only international forum for chamber leaders to share best-practice experiences, exchange insights, develop networks, address the latest business issues affecting their communities, and learn about new areas of innovation from chambers around the world. The Congress addresses at a practical level how chambers can serve, strengthen, and support their member companies. This exciting event assembles a global community of more than 12,000 chambers of commerce, their leading business members, and influential world leaders. It provides a unique opportunity for interaction between delegates from more than 100 countries. 2

3 1. BACKGROUND With increasing expectations on policymakers and training providers to develop more cost-effective ways of developing human capital, good practice sharing has been identified as one option to reduce time, cost and effort in bringing innovation and value to the entrepreneurship eco-system. Access to good practice in training is important, particularly in areas where knowledge and know-how are underdeveloped, as it can provide ideas and inspiration to those training organisations keen to widen or improve their training services. The global economic turndown and sluggish recovery across most world regions has impacted significantly on national economies and employment. Young people, in particular, stand out in the jobless figures. In the scramble for solutions, Governments, business and civic interest groups are giving fresh consideration to entrepreneurship promotion - considered key in addressing both short-term objectives (generating selfemployment for those out-of-work) and sustainable growth (growth-potential SMEs generating wealth and employment). Engaging young people into a country s entrepreneurship drive starts early, with education and training increasingly considered as a key pillar of building an entrepreneurial culture. Building the entrepreneurial mindset begins in primary schooling with more developed entrepreneurship and business skills following through in secondary and higher education. Outside formal education, training and support for budding young entrepreneurs is an additional pillar of the entrepreneurship eco-system. But entrepreneurship education is just one part of the equation. Young people starting up, or developing their businesses, also need access to finance. Training for young entrepreneurs and access to finance need to be addressed together. Loughran (2014) 1 argues for a packaged support for youth entrepreneurship where start-up guidance, training and follow-up mentoring to early-phase young entrepreneurs may not only mitigate high-risk lending to young people by banks but also generate greater added-value from their businesses. 2. AN ETF-ICC WCF CALL FOR GOOD PRACTICES Training for youth entrepreneurship and access to finance will be addressed at the 9thWorld Chambers Congress to be held in Torino, June The Congress is organized by ICC World Chambers Federation in cooperation with the Torino Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Crafts and Agriculture. The European Training Foundation (ETF) is cooperating with the ICC WCF on the youth entrepreneurship pillar of the conference and both organisations are jointly launching this call for good practice. The call focuses on packaged support to young entrepreneurs particularly in terms of entrepreneurship training and access to finance. 3. PURPOSE OF THE CALL The purpose of this call for good practices is to identify a set of good practices which can inform debate on youth entrepreneurship at the 9thWorld Chambers Congress. On 11 June 2015, the ETF will facilitate discussion on the issues at a dedicated open session at the Congress where a high-level panel will also be engaged to inform and inspire the discussions. 1 Loughran, D. (2014). Empowering a next generation of young entrepreneurs. INFORM (19). European Training Foundation, Turin, 19 July

4 4. THE CALL FOR GOOD PRACTICE AND DEADLINE The ETF and ICC World Chambers Federation are presently seeking submissions of good practice from Chambers of Commerce that provide training to young entrepreneurs. The training must include or be interfaced with support for access to finance for young entrepreneurs. The good practice submitted must have already had a delivery period of at least 18 months and still be current. The training providers may either be a) a Chamber of Commerce or b) an associate organisation of a Chamber of Commerce.. However, in both instances, the Chamber will be the applicant organisation and it will submit the application duly signed (see Section, 12 of the application form). For the purpose of this call: youth entrepreneurship training is any support measure which develops a young person s knowledge, attitudes or skills to start or develop his/her own business. Good practices should have an explicit human capital dimension i.e. education, training or other staff development feature (e.g. mentoring). Consequently, networking which may have an inherent human capital development line would not be sufficient unless it forms part of a clearly defined human capital development initiative; young entrepreneur refers to men and women in the age bracket years to whom the training is targeted; access to finance refers to support to young people in accessing or improving access to finance (e.g. grants, loans, credit guarantees, collateral) to help with starting up a business or in developing a business. It should not be confused with development of finance skills to run a business which may feature in a training programme. To assist ETF and ICC WCF in the identification of good practices, a form (with annex) is attached to this note which interested Chambers should complete and return to ETF-ICC@etf.europa.eu by the deadline, 6 March THE SELECTION For the purposes of identifying the good practices, a selection panel comprising ETF, WCF staff and independent expert will review all submissions. Two issues, in particular, are of interest in the selection process and should be borne in mind when completing the form and annex: Training: a) training needs analysis (how does the training meet the specific interests of the target group?) b) training design and delivery (how is the training organised to meet desired learning outcomes?) c) monitoring and evaluation (is training critically reviewed allowing for improvements?) d) measuring impact of the training (how are the results/impact of the training assessed?) Access to finance: The ETF-ICC WCF are also particularly interested in how access to finance is addressed within a youth entrepreneurship training programme. In their submissions, training providers should ensure to demonstrate how their training programme interfaces with access to finance. Some examples are provided below. 4

5 start-up training for young people: in the design of the training programme, the training provider liaises with and engages the local bank directly into the training delivery, with the bank s staff forming an integral part of the training module focusing on the business plan; pitching a business plan to an investor: volunteer business men and women, acting as potential investors, participate in a virtual role-play (e.g. skype call) where trainees learn the skills to pitch a business proposal to a potential investor; capacity of banking institutions to support youth entrepreneurship: in addition to providing training to early-phase businesses owned by young people, a training programme includes support to finance institutions specifically on the implications and options for lending to young entrepreneurs (capacity, capital, collateral, conditions, and character). Note that the project focuses on the training (good practice) as opposed to the training provider (good practitioner). Submissions should therefore focus on the training practice. Good practitioners who have participated in ETF s wider good practice programme are eligible to apply. 6. THE 9 TH WORLD CHAMBERS CONGRESS Top 10 good practices The ten most inspiring good practices selected will be written up and disseminated within a conference handbook. They will also be posted on ETF s good practice platform and on ICC WCF conference website. To this end, ETF may need to contact the training provider for additional information to complete the good practice publication. The youth entrepreneurship panel and young entrepreneurs The conference will include a dedicated panel discussion on youth entrepreneurship training and access to finance. It is planned to include two of the selected training providers on the panel. Their task will be to contribute to the wider panel reflections on the skills challenges for young people in starting up and developing their businesses as well as the challenges in accessing finance. The two training providers invited to join the panel should be accompanied at the conference by one young person who has successfully completed their training programme and who is running his/her own business. The two young people will be embedded into the conference plenary and will be directly engaged by the facilitator into the panel-conference discussions on youth entrepreneurship. Both the training providers and young entrepreneurs will join a preparatory meeting in Turin on 10th June (day before the panel). Costs of the participation of the training providers and young entrepreneurs at the ICC WCF Congress will be met by the proponent Chamber, the training provider or other sources. Participation on the conference panel of the training provider or at the conference does not involve professional fees. 7. MORE INFORMATION Contact Floriana Folisi at ETF Tel: ETF-ICC@etf.europa.eu 5

Entrepreneurship Education The Erasmus for Young Entpreneurs Programme

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