The 14th November results made by Femke

Indeed it was a very interesting and fruitful day. In the morning a steamcourse Climate change and after lunch we learned all about agricultural assistance at CTA.

After a mid-day tea Aldert dragged us along to get down to business (I).
First of all, thanks to everyone that contributed to our brainstorm phase. In different ways all thoughts and information added something to the point we are now.

Let me recapitulate all that has been discussed last yesterday:

There are two particular ODA budgetted programmes that were issued in our discussions:
One was the PUM programme that is based on senior experts providing assistance in short projects in developing countries. This MFA financed programme is focussed on (management) assistance on a higher level. SME’s are too small to be able to benefit from these kind of programmes. Apart from that, PUM provides ‘physical’ assistance, meaning advisors and experts travel to the countries of the beneficical organisations. This is very costly.
Then there is a similar programme of the EVD, an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Economical Affairs. They provide programmes for economic initiatives. PSI is one of those, a progamme that also focusses on high level organisations and isnt suitable to assist smaller organisations.

Our idea is to make these programmes or similar programmes more accesible for SME’s. An important aspect is that there is a big opportunity in saving costs by using new technologies: Web 2.0. Using open source websites for (a part of) these kind of programmes, can save costs and make them accessible for smaller organisations. Like a kind of MYC4 network (the one Madhawi wrote her blog about) but then for management assisitance.

Questions to be anwered are:

- In the persective of our idea described above, what has already been done in NL? Which governmental initiatives/companies are already occupied with this issue? What do they do and how can we use that?
- What is happening in developing countries regarding management assitence programmes for SMEs?

Concrete following steps are:

- Patrick: Approach BiD network (we wondered how they were financed: NCDO, ICCO, MFA and Nationale Postcode loterij) and ask for someone to assist us during our next working group on Decemver 12th
- Patrick: Send Femke a name and contact details of an interesting person of the EVD to give a presentation during the Januari session (and to assist us is our working group that afternoon (Femke will send contact details to Marjon)
- All: Tuesday december 15th we will gather at the Femke’s office Pifworld headquarters in Amsterdam to brainstorm about the actual interpretation of our recommendation. Block your agenda’s!
- Femke: Contacting BiD (NCDO) to find out what kind of SME management assistance already exists.
- Femke: contact Joram for our group page to find out how the *** it works.
- Madhawi and Amer: Marjon also gave us a few theme’s that are currently relevant in the business sector.One of them is the Missing Middle problem (finance for SME’s) and insight in market opportunities in developing countries for Dutch companies. It would be great if you can elaborate on the Missing Middle problem in Suriname and Bosnia.
- Femke: find out what Enviu is. This is an international network to assit entrepreneurs in social businesses valuable for people and planet.
(I will contact them to see whats in it for us)

For the people that weren’t there: I hope this summary gives you an idea of what we discussed and how we proceed. If you want more details, you can always phone me on +31641318778
For the people that were there: Please correct me if I’m wrong or incomplete in any of the things written above.

In general all ideas, research results, contacts with interesting people/institutions and thoughts are always welcome.

See you soon!