Business training strategy

Strategy 1: Integral business training strategy

BCDF is launching an integral business training strategy in San Andrés Azumiatla, a marginalized area of the city of Puebla. BCDF is collaborating with a saving cooperative, Caja Depac Pobalna, in order to target the cooperative members who take out small loans through the cooperative. Caja Depac Poblana provides access to an array of financial services in rural marginalized communities. In this partnership, Caja Depac Poblana provides BCDF access to its members in order to detect their business skill needs, offers critical input to ensure relevance of the training, and lends BCDF its space to carry out the training sessions and coaching. BCDF and Caja Depac Poblana aim to replicate this training strategy in other marginalized communities where the savings cooperative has branches.

The main goal of the business training strategy is to strengthen the capacities of micro business owners to run and manage profitable and sustainable businesses. We believe that profitable businesses will generate economic development not only for the business owners but for the larger community through job creation. The training consists of two stages: first stage is a 50 hour class that provides basic business skills such as marketing, sales, management and accounting and the second stage is personalized business coaching to different business clusters in order to apply the skills learned in the class. We will work closely with the savings cooperative to facilitate access to credit for these businesses to grow as well as facilitate access to additional government resources available for low income business owners.

Our theory of change is that by focusing on the capacities of the business owners, we will catalyze more profitable businesses which in turn will have positive impact on the community.

Monitoring: We will monitor the participants` satisfaction with the training through constant feedback on its relevance and applicability in their businesses in order to make necessary changes in real time.

Evaluation: How will we know if we have made any impact? We are currently exploring different diagnostic formats to apply to all of the businesses that participate in our training sessions. We will apply this diagnostic prior to enrollment in the training sessions and six months to one year after the training is over. The business diagnostic will rate the business on the following aspects: management, accounting, suppliers, product quality, customer satisfaction, corporate governance, and human resources. In order to measure the impact of business strategy on the larger community, we will also document the business ‘annual revenue and number of people employed before and after the training. As businesses are more profitable, the owners will spend more money within the community and therefore generate impact on a community level. Job creation allows community members to improve their standard of living.