Training of Facilitators (ToF) on Entrepreneurial Business Planning

A Training of Facilitators (ToF) on Entrepreneurial Business Planning was organized by the Institute of Livelihood Research and Training (ILRT) for the Officials of Meghalaya Basin Development Authority (MBDA), Basin Development Units (BDUs) and the Meghalaya Institute of Entrepreneurship (MIE) from 12th – 16th April, 2016 here in Shillong. The training was facilitated by Dr. S. S Tabrez Nasar, Vice Dean, ILRT Hyderabad with the broad objective of building capacities of Enterprise Resource Persons (ERPs) and officials from MBDA / MIE and equip them with knowledge required to facilitate entrepreneurs across the State. Twenty three personnel of the above organizations participated in this 5 – day training which comprised of six one hour sessions per day.,The sessions consisted of (a) content presentation and discussions (b) presentation and discussion of case studies and (c) an exercise related to the session. The module was designed in such a way that it involves the Cognitive (conceptual and therefore the presentations); Affective (emotional and therefore the case studies); and Conative (action and therefore the exercises) aspects of human emotions and therefore much more effective as opposed to usual training methodologies. On three of the five days, the last session was a ‘Talk by an entrepreneur’. In this session, a successful entrepreneur, who is at par with the ‘partners’ in question, was invited (e.g.: an entrepreneur who is successfully managing poultry, piggery or a kirana store). These entrepreneurs were able to present their ‘case’ verbally (with aid of picture on a power point) and the story of their journey of success.,The training was a general success as a majority of the participants found that the learning activities were helpful in formulating business plans, especially to those who have very little knowledge of accounts and finance related work.