By Fr. Emeterio Barcelon, SJ
WE have had a disastrous agrarian reform program. The people in it were trying their best but the structure was not there. Land was given to the farmers but the other necessary ingredients to make it succeed were not there. There was no financing, a bit of technology, no marketing, but most of all there was no capability building of the recipients to make the program succeed. In the micro finance program, the poverty problem was approached from a different angle, the finance angle. The wives of farmers who had time on their hands were given access to financing. This had a two pronged solution. One prong harnessed the idle time of the women and by the other they had financing which enabled them to be entrepreneurs. For the most part, micro finance has been a success from the innovation of Mr. Mohamed Yunus of Bangladesh. But even Grameen, which is Mr. Yunus’ organization, is now talking of small business. And for this capability building is necessary. All it means is that the participants are taught how to become entrepreneurs by running them through some training in financial recording and control and management rudiments. They must be taught to plan, execute, evaluate, and then plan again both short term and long range. They must be taught how to record and control their income and expenses. These are the basics that can be taught to groups. Technology, marketing, and financing also have to be provided but these have to be furnished in a more individualized basis. In livelihood, where they hire only themselves and family members, any problems in these areas can be overcome with hard work since the size of the entity is miniscule. But in small business where the capitalization becomes bigger and the hiring of others is needed, entrepreneurship and good management have to be taught.
Peter Drucker, the management guru of the past half century, used to say that there are 2 percent of people who are born entrepreneurs but an economy needs about 10 percent of entrepreneurs and good managers for it to flourish. Where are you going to get the other 8 percent? He said that the only solution is to teach and train them. And this has been successfully done by the business schools and the MBA courses for the upper echelon of society. Although to a lesser degree, the poorer sectors of society also need this training. The rich have Harvard Business School, Stanford, AIM, etc. Similar training for the poor is also needed. They can also lose their shirt unless properly prepared or, on the other hand, become more successful if they were warned ahead of the pitfalls and pointed to opportunities. An MBA normally takes one to two years, will a one month or two-training program be enough for the small business people? We don’t know until we try. But it will certainly be better than no training at all. Capability-building is even more imperative in small business than in big business. And there is nothing like it to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. Looking at it from a different angle, it can be a small business incubation program. There is no dearth of native talent around and it is possible to teach and learn the rudiments of business. In general, we are not a country of merchants and organized producers. Of course, we have the Batangueño and Maranao hawkers and Chinese descent traders. But in general we are farmers, fisher folk, workers, poets, and singers who do well what they are told to do. But we learn fast and can be depended on to try our best. Capability-building and small business incubation are the need of the present. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com>
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