Enterprise Development

This course gives you an introduction to the area of Business enterprise, and the principles around financial resilience.

Learning TopicMarket opportunities What is this topic about?Market opportunities provide smallholder farmers and SAC staff with tools and knowledge on how to improve access to markets by understanding how local markets work and by identifying opportunities to create new markets and business linkages. Why is this important?Marketing farm products, fresh and processed, is part of our enterprise development approach. It is linked with Food Sovereignty, focusing in providing smallholder farmers possibility to control and plan community trading with quality, local and sustainable produced food products. How is this integral to SAC’s work?By supplying existing local markets and creating new ones, smallholder farmers will be able to improve their diet and circulate cash among their communities. Instead of purchasing products from intermediary, they will increase capacity to expand the range of food products they produce in their farm. Farmers may increase income, reduce time to travel to markets, create job opportunities and boost local economy.  Aim of the Learning TopicTo provide smallholder farmers and staff members tools and skills to design new market ventures and take advantage of existing market opportunities to boost local economy. Learning ObjectivesFarmers will be able to:Understand how existing local markets workMap product prices and market windows throughout the yearIdentify opportunities to create new local marketsDefine value-addition opportunities according to local needsPlan join actions with Self-help groups (SHG), Cluster-level associations (CLA) and communities on how to organise their own smallholder farmer community marketStaff (and PFT where possible) will also be able to:Conduct training sessions to support smallholder farmers on building skillsAccompany SHG and CLAs conducting participatory market assessmentsIdentify potential areas for value-additionLink farmers with other training opportunities when neededPromote a learning community and support farmers to learn from each other RequirementsTo analyse markets, participants should have covered gender and social inclusion and farm systems training.It is required SHGs, CLAs and/or community members have covered “Food is our business” module.Number and Outline of sessionsThis Topic includes 12 sessions of 4 hours each (48 hours of training, mixed theory and practice)1.      Market analysis (diversified production)1.1  Analysis of existing market opportunities  (theory)1.2  Supply and demand chains (theory1.3  Monitoring market prices (theory)1.4  Conducting market visits (practice)                        1.5   Market learning and planning (theory) 2.      Creating new markets2.1 Calculating production volumes (theory and practice)2.2 Calculating food demand (theory and practice)2.3 Planning community market pilot (theory)2.4 Piloting community market (practice)2.5 Analyzing outcomes of pilot (theory)2.6 Planning next steps (theory)2.7 Organizing ourselves to run our community market How this worksXXX Links to principlesXXX