Woman at work

Generally, microenterprise trainers face the difficult task of teaching complex business skills to entrepreneurs who have little formal training, limited time to engage in learning, and who have various levels of education. Teaching can take different forms and take place in various settings including classroom type lectures, one-on-one counseling, peer networking, and mentoring programs. Practitioners agree that the quality and quantity of training and technical assistance provided to a receptive entrepreneur can often be the biggest factor in whether the entrepreneur's business succeeds or fails. Certainly the individual's personal motivation to make the business a success, and the product or service itself, are also big factors.

Credit and access to credit is a critical service to offer entrepreneurs who are looking to start or expand a business. This means either offering credit directly through a loan, fund or other credit program offered by an organization, or by providing access to credit.     Access to credit programming involves partnerships between the microenterprise program and other organizations or institutions (e.g. banks, credit union,financial intermediaries etc.) in the community due to numerous reasons; one example being that a microenterprise program may not have the resources needed to support its own lending program. Or, there may already be an institution in the community who offers credit services to the same clientele. In this case, it would not be time or cost efficient to duplicate services. Instead, by partnering with that organization, the services each group provides can be maximized.

Related Links

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Organization of Eastern Carribean States