The young people who attend the Enterprising Ethiopia programme are selected on three criteria. They must be unemployed, they must have achieved reasonable grades at school and they must be motivated and demonstrate a willingness to consider becoming involved in the creation of a new small business. Some will have gone on from school to attend a TVET (Technical and Vocational College) but unemployment among TVET graduates tends to be high.

They are selected by the city manager in each of the places in which Alchemy World operates (Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, Mekele, Harar and Hawasa) who works closely with other organisations such as local youth associations, ICT community centres and others.

The Enterprising Ethiopia training is ‘Action Learning’, the young people are fully involved as participants in workshops and activities, not simply passive recipients of lectures – the ‘chalk and talk’ kind of training which requires little involvement by the students. The New Venture Creation programme extends over a period of six months and participants are required to undertake activities in between the different workshops that are part of the project.

The programme is not just a list of stand-alone workshops but a series of interventions which extends to supporting young people, after the training, in setting up and developing a growth business through an incubation service and/or self-help group which can also provide support for those seeking employment rather than creating a business. This requires that Alchemy World commits itself to each city for a period of years while a local ‘eco-system’ of entrepreneurs and business people develops who, ultimately, will take over the programmes in that area.

This approach to entrepreneurship training was first developed and used by a consortium of universities in the UK called ‘West Focus’ and draws on the work of David Stokes, Emeritus Professor of Entrepreneurship at Kingston University, London, and Stephen Whaley, Alchemy’s Programme Director, who was previously Director of Knowledge Transfer and Entrepreneurship at the University of Westminster, London.

It is not uncommon in Ethiopia for NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) to offer training workshops and to pay the participants to attend. Alchemy World does not subscribe to the idea of paying attendees for two reasons; firstly because we are interested in people who are motivated to attend and learn – not those who are only there for the money and, secondly, because we depend on donations and have to be very careful with money.

Alchemy World does not want to be an NGO that works entirely on its own so efforts are always made to work in partnership with government agencies, youth associations, ICT community centres, educational institutions and other organisations to maximise the impact of our work and to keep down costs.