Aprenda - The Power of Knowledge - English

Small businesses, big entrepreneurs.

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The power of knowledge: Small businesses, big entrepreneurs

Vivimos en un continente de empresarios y ese es un hecho que nos llena de alegría. En Aprenda creemos que el éxito de una persona radica en ser el dueño de su propio destino y esto se ve reflejado en los millones de empresarios y emprendedores exitosos de América Latina que han sabido ver oportunidades mientras otros sólo pudieron ver dificultades y caos.

Consideramos que la institución más importante en el contexto latinoamericano actual es la empresa debido a las repercusiones sociales, económicas y políticas a las que conlleva. Sabemos que hacer empresa supone de vocación, esfuerzo y sacrificio pero también que la recompensa es extraordinaria. Por ello en nuestro trabajo diario buscamos que las personas a quienes formamos y capacitamos sean el motor del cambio y del emprendimiento y no simplemente espectadores de las acciones de otros porque el éxito sí es posible y está al alcance de todos.

Más allá de elaborar un folleto corporativo quisimos denominar a este documento “The Power of Knowledge. Small Businesses, big entrepreneurs” basándonos en nuestra convicción de que la capacitación es la herramienta más útil para crecer empresarialmente y como testimonio tangible de nuestro reconocimiento a los millones de emprendedores cuyo trabajo y esfuerzo mueven a nuestro continente.

En esta publicación podrán conocer un poco más sobre el trabajo que viene realizando Aprenda con instituciones como Citibank del Perú, Citi Foundation, el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo y otras organizaciones. Adicionalmente, encontrarán el resumen

de dos proyectos listos para ser ejecutados en América Latina: capacitación en gestión empresarial para 10,000 empresarios del sector rural y para estudiantes de los dos últimos años de educación secundaria. Como parte de una contribución real de estos proyectos de capacitación al desarrollo de nuestra región hemos añadido notas sobre la relación directa e indirecta de ellos con los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio.

En Aprenda creemos que las organizaciones internacionales y las grandes empresas pueden ser excelentes aliados de las micro y pequeñas empresas latinoamericanas y día a día buscamos ser un puente entre ambos sectores identificando espacios conjuntos de trabajo en los que todos ganen. Soñamos con una América Latina de empresarios y emprendedores. Construyamos juntos ese sueño.

Claudia Becerra BrazziniGeneral ManagerAprenda - Grupo ACP

THE POWER OFKNOWLEDGE

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Aprenda, Instituto de la Microempresa - Grupo ACP

Aprenda at a glance

41 years ago, a group of Peruvian entrepre-neurs decided to bet for entrepreneurs from micro-companies, they developed a set of en-tities specializing in providing tools for social and economical inclusion. We are proud to be today the training company of Grupo ACP, the socially-oriented Peruvian corporation with the greatest presence in Latin-America.

Since 2000, our company is specialized in training professionals, entrepreneurs and bu-sinessmen from micro and small companies in Peru and Latin-America. We provide them educational services corresponding to the re-quirements of the market and encouraging a value-based, entrepreneurial excellence cultu-re.

Through our own initiatives and creating alliances with private companies and multila-teral organizations, we develop programs to educate competitive and socially responsible people. There are more than 110000 busi-nessmen and entrepreneurs who have been part of Aprenda programs in Peru and Latin-America.

Training programs

Massive programs

Under a highly interactive workshop me-thodology, using clear and simple speech, we teach business management techniques and develop skills in businessmen to improve ma-nagement in their micro and small companies.

These programs may gather a maximum of 300 participants in each workshop, who finish the training showing not only a high level of satisfaction, but an increase in their knowled-ge; as our experience has confirmed in the last three years.

The itinerant, modular and massive nature of the program, allows us to train a large number of businessmen in a short time, avoiding dis-traction from their productive activities, obtai-ning a high level of satisfaction and learning.

Modular programs

Aprenda develops larger modular programs as well. Under the same recreational and par-ticipatory scope, groups of no more than 50 participants are trained in each workshop. In these programs we assume that the partici-pant already has some knowledge (based on his experience) and all he needs is to arrange it and acquire new knowledge to help him de-velop his company and grow as a person.

In order to run these programs, Aprenda de-veloped training modules responding to the exact training needs of the participants. We are also one of the two operators of “Diálogo de gestiones” program in Peru, which consists in a series of courses and workshops designed and validated by ACCIÓN Internacional. This methodology allows the entrepreneur to see, analyze, transform and evaluate, so he beco-mes an active participant of his training.

Through these programs, Aprenda is working to give more access to education and training to those people in the base of the social pyra-mid.

Methodology

After over 10 years working to train profes-sionals, businessmen and entrepreneurs, we are aware that the content of a training program must keep a close relation to each person’s reality. This is why in Aprenda we link theory and practice, in order to guarantee that our participants apply in their daily activities what they learned in the training. Furthermo-re, regarding business training programs, we rely on a trainers staff that has experience in “doing businesses” besides their academic ex-perience.

Our educational programs use a series of au-diovisual resources (soap operas, radio serials, short videos, music, etc); we have developed audiovisual records during the last years as a methodological support to our trainings. We also design and produce ad hoc material if re-quired to meet the objectives of each educa-tional program.

Finally, as we are part of Grupo ACP, we offer our corporate customers the choice to develop training programs that could be complimen-

ted with different approaches and additional services supported by other organizations which are part of our group as well.

Social responsibility

As part of Grupo ACP, Aprenda is concerned in obtaining profitability in social, economical and environmental fields. Last year, Aprenda trained for free over 500 students from uni-versities and occupational schools, so they can start their own companies. Also aware of its large usage of paper (needed in its training programs), Aprenda has agreed to use sugar cane (instead of tree) paper or paper from sustainable forests or recycled paper. This is added to the neutrality in the CO2 emissions of its website.

Quick Facts

• 110 000+ trained people• 1000+ didactic courses and workshops• 12 full-time professionals• 40+ specialist consultants


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Corporate Services

Events to create a business culture

We design massive activities in which, in an agile and fun way, we promote the creation and strengthening of companies, using an in-novative and simple mechanism, easy to reach for everyone in order to obtain individual and collective development. The objective is that participants value the role of the company and its contribution to the society.

Business Training Centers

Together with the company, we establish per-manent comprehensive training centers, which promote the creation and strengthening of lo-cal companies by teaching modular courses, constant consultancy to participants and con-sultancy to small companies.

Strengthening the extractive companies’ sphere of influence

We train micro and small companies and com-munities surrounding the operation area of extractive companies in the mining sector, we aim to create new companies responding to the needs of the local and regional market, which not necessarily depend on the extrac-tive activity.

Inclusive businesses

We design training programs to deal with the educational component of the strategies of Inclusive Businesses of the companies. We res-pond to the needs of education of people who start in the base of the social pyramid, and we focus on business management and technical education.

Main Corporate Customers

Our customers share our philosophy of tea-ching and training competitive, socially-res-ponsible entrepreneurs, professionals and businessmen. In the previous years we have trained over 110 thousand people in Peru, Uruguay and Mexico, and we have become the specialist company in training micro and small companies in Latin-America.

Financial Sector• Mibanco Grupo ACP - Peru• Citibank del Peru - Peru• Microfin Grupo ACP - Uruguay• Caja Nuestra Gente – Peru• Forjadores Grupo ACP - Mexico

Industrial Sector• Grupo Trebol Celima - Peru• Johnson & Johnson - Peru• Asociación Atocongo - Peru• Wayra - Peru

International Cooperation• SNV Netherlands Development Organiza-

tion - Peru• Fundación para el Desarrollo Sostenible

(Fundeso) - Spain• Acción Internacional - Colombia

Extractive Sector• Consorcio Minero Horizonte - Peru• Anglo American Quellaveco - Peru• Minera Barrick Misquichilca - Peru

Communication Sector• Telefónica del Peru - Peru• Conecta Grupo ACP - Peru

Training on distribution and supply chain

We organize, design and give training courses and workshops to develop and/or strengthen abilities of businessmen from micro and small companies that belong to the distribution and supply chain of the big company.

International-funded programs

We design, evaluate and implement training programs promoted by international funding. Our work experience with multilateral orga-nizations and international cooperation su-pports us in order to ensure the fulfillment of the highest standards.

Aprenda designs and executes ability deve-lopment projects for the different interest groups of the organizations. We bring into practice integral programs to develop busi-ness skills in a public as varied as: rural com-munities, general collaborators, collabora-tors’ relatives, members of the distribution chain of a big company, businessmen from the influence area, and others.


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100 thousand trained women!THE GREAT JUMP IN PERU

The Challenge

Develop abilities in 100 thousand business women in Peru.

The promoter

“El Gran Salto” (“The Great Jump”) is a free tra-ining program for business women from mi-cro-companies, which is offered by the project “Fortalecimiento de la Capacidad Empresarial de la Mujer en Perú” (“Strengthening Women Business Capacity in Peru”), which is an initia-tive led by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through its Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), and will be executed until 2013. Other institutions contributing to these trai-nings are the Australian Government, through its Agency for International Development (Au-sAID) and the business school of Thunderbird School of Global Management (USA).

The Program

The Project general objective is to show -by the positive impact of the training- that in-termediary financial institutions (IFIs) contri-bute more effectively to the development of their customers, if they add to their financial services offer, services like trainings on busi-ness management. To this effect, the project is managed by Aprenda in order to develop and execute the training sessions in the whole country.

The Benefits

“The Great Jump” has a totally new format, compared to others. Besides the educatio-nal and practical exposition of concepts, the workshop resorts to the videos of “La Historia de Vicky: Una Emprendedora como muchas” (“Vicky’s Story: an Entrepreneur like many others”) as a tool in the training. Under a soap opera format and expositions, a pleasant 3 hours training workshop on business mana-gement goes by, the participants are able to watch real and daily situations of a business woman, examples are explained and intense interaction is encouraged. 4 million dollars were invested on “The Great Jump”. This is an unusual and unprecedented investment in management training for business women.

Impact in the Millennium Development Goals• MDG 1 - Target 1 - Income - Direct• MDG 2 - Target 3 - Education- Indirect• MDG 3 - Target 4 - Gender equality - Di-

rect

Entrepreneurship for the futureCITIBANK AND APRENDA: 6 YEARS EDUCATING ENTERPRENEURS

The Challenge

Develop entrepreneurs’ and businessmen’s abilities in emerging areas in Lima in order to promote the creation and improvement of micro-companies.

The promoter

Citibank del Peru is a bank with global inves-tments, operating in Peru for 90 years. As part of their social responsibility programs they de-velop different lines of action. Regarding the education of businessmen in micro-compa-nies, they have worked together with Aprenda for 6 years now and 4700 Peruvians have been trained for free.

The Program

Since 2004, Citibank del Peru has worked with entrepreneurs and businessmen from micro-companies, who have received free access to technical education and business manage-

ment through 6 training programs. Over the years there have been modules of gastronomy, dairy products, fruit processing and patisserie, together with sessions of training on business management. This allowed the participants (mostly women) to improve or start their own company.

The Benefits

Business training and education is not always within the reach of everyone, especially those starting at the base of the social pyramid. Citi-bank del Peru and Aprenda identified that the business technical education may contribute to break the poverty line, increase the income of the beneficiaries and generate more jobs. To date, 23% of participants created a new company and 15% generated new jobs. The-se indicators show the effort of both compa-nies to provide appropriate and high-quality services to the emerging areas, where most businessmen and entrepreneurs from micro-companies are.

Impact in the Millennium Development Goals

• MDG 1 - Target 1 - Income - Direct• MDG 2 - Target 3 - Education- Indirect• MDG 3 - Target 4 - Gender equality - Di-

rect• MDG 8 - Target 16 - Youth employment -

Indirect


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“10,000” ProjectTraining for businessmen of the rural sector

Background

Framed on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there is no doubt that the relief of ru-ral poverty and the improvement of life condi-tions of rural inhabitants are closely related to the promotion of small-rural-agricultural and non-agricultural companies, which allow to re-duce and overcome poverty.

Unfortunately, there has been just limited in-ternational help, focused in some sectors of the rural world only, such as agro-alimentary industry or rural population known as “econo-mically viable”. On the other hand, just a few governments have given priority in their poli-tical and economical agenda to the promotion of rural companies, which has been reflected in a lack of strategies, concrete plans, support instruments and initiatives to generate busi-nesses.

For that reason, Aprenda has developed the “10,000” project, focused on training, at no cost, 10,000 businessmen of the rural sector for their economical and personal growth.

Objectives of the project

• Develop self-confidence and personal-es-teem of the rural businessman.

• Free access to micro-company manage-ment knowledge.

• Develop skills on business and personal finances.

Suppositions

• All locations where trainings will take place have proper facilities and equipment.

• The topic of the event will attract the at-tention of the people and they will assist en masse to the trainings.

Risks

• Elements such as: local festivities, public demonstrations, political activities, incle-mencies of the nature, etc. may affect the development of the program.

Key activities

Stage I: Development

1. Definition of contents and objectives: Ba-sed on Aprenda previous experience in rural training, topics, objectives, locations and quantitative goals of the program will be defined.

2. Design: Based on the previous paragraph, methodology is designed, contents are designed, printed materials are created, multimedia support is created, strategy to call for the training is designed, and trai-ning schedule is created.

3. Production: Production of all elements for the training is hired (audio, printed ma-terial, certificates, games, posters, flyers, banderoles, etc.)

4. Test workshop: Acceptance/rejection of the content and methodology of the tra-ining is checked, suggestions to improve the training are taken.

5. Local coordination: Contact with coordina-tors of each location is established, they are the support on the announcement and execution of the event.

6. Trainers training: A call and training to all the trainers’ team is made.

Stage II: Execution

Before the training1. Hiring: Facilities for the training are hired,

as well as snacks for the participants, equi-pment, etc.

2. Announcement: The announcement of the workshop is made with support of the lo-cal coordinators.

The day itself1. Reception of participants and they pick

the materials (notebook, pen, survey, re-gistration sheet).

2. Training3. Reception of surveys and certification of

all participants.

Stage III: Report1. A report is made and delivered to the pro-

moter entity.2. Publication of the results to all de interes-

ted groups of the project.

Funding

Aprenda, based on its experience, has desig-ned de “10,000” project to train micro-compa-nies businessmen of the rural sector for free. This project is ready to be implemented. If you are interested in contributing to this initiative, please get in touch with us.


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“EscuelaEmprendedora” ProjectBusiness training for high school students

Background

Target 16 of the Millennium Development Goals encourages the creation of more oppor-tunities for young people in relation to emplo-yment. Bearing in mind that Latin-America is a continent with a high percentage of young people, it is a priority to guarantee their inclu-sion in the local and regional economy.

For this reason, and based on the premise to give access to those starting at the base of the socio-economical pyramid, Aprenda develo-ped de “Escuela Emprendedora” (“Entrepre-neur School”) project, seeking to obtain an im-provement in competencies and capabilities of the students in the last 2 years of high school, so they are able to create their own compa-nies.

The need of the program is based on the growing figures of unemployment in young people between 15 and 24 years-old, which are twice higher that the adults’. According to the Ministry of Education of Peru, 3 out of 5 million young people of that country are out of the Economically Active Population (EAP) and they are still isolated from the educatio-nal system. If they do not study, these young people will have no chance to get a well-paid job at any point in their lives, this brings other social exclusions, such as: access to a decent house, access to finances, etc.

Objectives of the project

• Free access to micro-company manage-ment knowledge.

• Develop personal capabilities of the par-ticipants

• Promote the creation of new companies that allow the participants to be inserted in the local economy and increase their personal and family income.

Suppositions

• We count with the approval of the gover-nment institution responsible of public schools that hold the project’s target po-pulation.

• Public schools are willing to participate of the project

Risks

• Elements of town where the public school is located (festivities, fairs, etc.) may affect the proper development of the project.

Key activities

Stage I: Development

1. Definition of contents and objectives: Ba-sed on Aprenda previous experience in rural training, topics, objectives, locations, public schools and quantitative goals of the program will be defined.

2. Design: Based on the previous paragraph, methodology is designed, contents are designed, printed materials are created, multimedia support is created, strategy to call for the training is designed, and trai-ning schedule is created.

3. Production: Production of all elements for the training is hired (audio, printed ma-terial, certificates, games, posters, flyers, banderoles, etc.)

4. Test module: Acceptance/rejection of the content and methodology of the training is checked, suggestions to improve the training are taken.

5. Trainers training: A call and training to all the trainers’ team is made.

Stage II: Execution

1. Institutional coordination. Coordination about the execution of the program is made with the selected public schools; work schedules are validated and appro-ved.

2. Workshops: According to what Aprenda and the public school agreed upon, wor-kshops are given to students of the last 2 years of high-school.

3. Evaluation: In order to measure the pro-gress of the students, a test of their knowledge is made in the middle and the

end of the program.4. Business project fair: The students of all

participating public schools show their bu-siness projects in a public faire.

5. Awards The best projects will be awarded with non-refundable bank funding to start their micro-company.

Stage III: Report

1. A report is made and delivered to the pro-moter entity.

2. Publication of the results to all de interes-ted groups of the project.

Funding

There similar project in Latin-America at this moment. However, they are oriented to well-off socio-economical sectors. The “Escuela Emprendedora” Project is oriented to the seg-ment of population at the base of the pyra-mid, which does not have access to business training in the school stage. This project is ready to be implemented. If you are interested in contributing to this initiative, please get in touch with us.


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About Millenium Development Goals

THE POWER OFKNOWLEDGESmall businesses, big entrepreneurs.

Editor: Juan Román | Photography: Victor Zuniga | Translation: Guillermo LaurianoContact: [email protected], Twitter @aprendagrupoacp

About Grupo ACP

Grupo ACP is the Peruvian business group present in Latin-America, distinguished by its social mission with business efficiency. With over 41 years of experience, it is the leader in the promotion of the development of entre-preneurs and businessmen from micro and small companies; it provides services to over a million customers.

Grupo ACP is a non-profit entity reinvesting 100% of its profits to generate social inclusion, creating access to different products and ser-vices for entrepreneurs and businessmen from micro and small companies. The companies which are part of Grupo ACP have a social, en-vironmental and financial responsibility. Grupo ACP is present in 22 companies in 9 countries in Latin-America: Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Ec-uador, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They include eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epide-mics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership for development.

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger2. Achieve universal primary education3. Promote gender equality and empower

women4. Reduce child mortality rate5. Improve maternal health6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other di-

seases7. Ensure environmental sustainability8. Develop a global partnership for develo-

pment

Documents

Aprenda - The Power of Knowledge - English