Small
Business Training and Development
Doctorate of Philosophy
lement Edwardo Hill, II’s Small Business Training and Development Doctorate of Philosophy from the Union Institute and University was entitled “The Role of Small Business Training and Development in An Emerging Economy.” It included a ten-module training program that was called the Micro Enterprise Development Program (MEDP). This program was a national project in the British Virgin Islands territory for improved local service to entrepreneurs.
Clement Edwardo Hill, II, Ph.D.
The training program represented a flexible method of encouraging the development of small businesses, helping to expand current businesses, and posturing local economic development. Community development depended on small business as they can account for more jobs than larger companies, and they generated more than one half of all major innovations. What’s more, small businesses were more cost efficient in research and development than larger firms.
It was in the area of entrepreneurial empowerment that Dr. Hill’s program has its genesis. Entrepreneurial empowerment meant enabling micro entrepreneurs so that they had control over the direction that their lives were taking and that they would have the ability to engage in activities that contributed to their own development as well as the development of the country.
The essential elements of the program were:
1. Training in business skills and personal development;
2. Mentoring and support for participants (three year period);
3. Technical assistance for participants
4. Provision of credit for micro enterprises, and
5. Development of the ability to save and invest.
The purposes of the program were:
(a) To contribute rational and possible regional efforts to reduce small business failure and unemployment by relaxing the credit constraint and increasing training which is perceived to inhibit enterprise development, and
(b) To develop, pilot test, and promote the widespread implementation of a credit/training scheme which targets new business “start ups”; accommodates the particular circumstances and problems they face and ensure high levels of repayment, thus enabling the achievement of a self-sustaining status and prospect for expansion.
Over the long term, the program aimed:
(a) To raise the social and economic standards of living young men and women in the project area;
(b) To promote entrepreneurial training to access credit from larger financial institutions;
(c) To improve awareness amongst financial institutions about credit worthiness of young men and women, and
(d) To identify potential co-financiers for the replication and expansion of the initiative.
In the short run Dr. Hill’s program aimed:
(a) To improve business skills and attitudes among entrepreneurs;
(b) To build individual self-esteem;
(c) To enable entrepreneurs to gain access to credit with little collateral, and
(d) To encourage individual and group savings.
Dr. Hill selected the British Virgin Islands as the theater for his doctorate. His father and his father’s contemporaries had their own businesses. They were not dependent on seasonal tourism that was owned and operated by white ex-patriots. He hoped to revive that sense of independence and self-sustainability among citizens.
Small Business Training and Development
Management Techniques
Sales Techniques
Marketing Strategies
Quality Control Systems
Money/Financial Planning/Banking
Customer Service Techniques
Inventory Control Systems
Pricing Systems
Accounting Systems for Small Business
The Business plan (Completion and Review)
What was missing later, was web site development online and offline work.
Links
The above meditation mandala will be available soon.
