Training for Microenterprise Development: A Guide to Curricula

This Guide to Curricula is intended to provide microenterprise practitioners with objective information about a broad range of business training curricula that are currently in use and available commercially in the U.S. Over the course of the last decade, researching and evaluating the practice and outcomes of microenterprise in the U.S., FIELD researchers have observed that choosing, obtaining and designing microenterprise core training curricula consume a large amount of the time and resources of many programs. And, this effort recurs every few years. Curricula age, target clients and missions evolve, and program capacities change. The result is that training curricula are continually being updated or replaced.

This Guide is intended to help practitioners in two ways. The first is to provide a brief discussion of some issues that are important to consider as a microenterprise program begins to identify and catalog what it seeks in a new curriculum. Examples of these issues include mission and ideology; key client characteristics, and program strategy and resources, among others. At the conclusion of the discussion of these issues, a self-assessment tool is provided for the reader to record his or her responses to a number of questions. This will help the reader catalog his or her thoughts for full consideration prior to beginning a curriculum search in earnest.

The second way that this guide is intended to assist practitioners is by organizing and presenting detailed information about 13 different curricula that, at the time of publication, are available for purchase in the U.S. The purpose of this is to provide a directory of entries that contain objective and standardized information (to the extent possible) about key characteristics of each curriculum. This guide does not rate, recommend or endorse any specific curriculum. Rather, it presents information about characteristics, such as format, duration, target client, cost and scope of content, so that practitioners can determine which products fit their programs' needs or merit further investigation. It is anticipated that additional follow-up by the reader would include reviewing several different curricula. However, much of the leg-work associated with research and initial screening will have been accomplished for the reader. Using this document should save readers time and money.

Volume 3: Training for Microenterprise Development: A Guide to Curricula (PDF)

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