For the second year ANPECOM has realized entrepreneurship workshops for young people in different cities of the country, in partnership with Aliança Empreendedora.
The Geração Empreendedora (Entrepreneur Generation - the tr.) project is part of the portfolio of opportunities Aliança Empreendedora offers, with the cooperation of the partner organizations scattered throughout Brazil. They are committed to training young people starting up as entrepreneurs or having micro-enterprises in the start-up phase. Partner organisations such as Anpecom bring together groups of young people and run workshops lasting several days directly in their communities, with a solid and widely participatory methodology.
In this second year of partnership, Anpecom has trained 107 young people, in seven different workshops held in the cities of Manaus (AM), Cotia (SP), Chorozinho (CE), Salitre (CE), Jaguaribara (CE) and Jaguaretama (CE), relying on a team of five facilitators pre-trained by Aliança Empreendedora: The workshops were entitled: "vai que dá" (a popular way to say: "go for it, ‘cause it's possible” - the tr.) for those who didn't have a micro-enterprise yet, and "vai ou racha" ("make it or break it” - the tr.) for those who had already started to undertake. Part of the methodology is based on Sara Sarasvathy's Effectuation, a methodology that aims to develop the business starting from the skills and structures already existing in the life of the entrepreneur: starting from a self-analysis each entrepreneur is able to understand what they do, what they already know how to do, whom they can count on and based on all this, how they can develop their business plan or restructure an existing business.
Rarison Coelho, who followed the groups of Manaus (AM), wrote us that the methodology applied was fundamental in the process, but the proposal of the EoC enriched the process a lot because it gave a "soul" to the workshop, so that everyone looked at the person as the most important thing of all, more important than the concepts or the very enterprise of each participant. Dialogue and communion were the key points for the success of the project, because it became shared wealth. Everyone has "earned" in this dynamic and it seems that they left the session satisfied and with their aims achieved.
Melina Borges points out that challenges tend to arise during the meetings, but that these points are also essential in the training of the entrepreneur: "We have rearranged the room so that it is more comfortable, with everyone’s help. In some meetings the snack was prepared by the young people. The moments in which they looked at each other were special... Some adjustments have been made to take a better look at entrepreneurs who already have a business: an evaluation of the main difficulties and a SWOT analysis have also been included in the activities.
Marcio Silva Oliveira, who attended one of the workshops stated: "We often have ideas and we don't know if they are really good or if we are deluding ourselves, so doubts, fears and insecurities are born and the ideas can even die before we try to talk about them. Also, even though trying to make the most of it all, doing research and gathering information about our ideas, sometimes we do not know where to start. So this course was perfect to give us a direction and let us understand where and how to start!
Two more workshops are planned for the second half of this year, and young people who have already participated and wish to be accompanied will be able to keep in touch in the form of mentoring.
