tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8733114253594655612024-03-12T17:24:32.965-07:00Sirolli Institute WeblogInformation from the Sirolli Institute. What we are doing, thinking and feeling about the development of Enterprise Facilitation and responsive systems of development.Sirolli Institutehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14571148924452405304noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-47210186433827276302012-05-30T09:17:00.000-07:002012-05-30T09:17:16.227-07:00Sirolli Program announced for HUON VALLEY<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><img border="0" id="_x0000_i1025" src="http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0004/160384/logo.jpg" /> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lara Giddings ~ Premier</span></span><u1:p></u1:p><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: GillSans, serif;">The Premier, Lara
Giddings, today announced that the Huon Valley region would be added as a pilot
site for the Ernesto Sirolli economic development model. </span><u1:p></u1:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: GillSans, serif;">Ms Giddings said
the extension of the trial had been made possible by George Town and Scottsdale
agreeing to partner on the project.</span><u1:p></u1:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: GillSans, serif;">"The decision
to pool resources for the North East roll-out has made it possible to bring the
benefits of Dr Ernesto Sirolli's innovative approach to economic development to
the Huon Valley region,including Geeveston," Ms Giddings said.</span><u1:p></u1:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: GillSans, serif;">"Like the
other towns identified for the pilot of this project, the Huon Valley region
has been hard-hit by the down-turn in the forest industry.</span><u1:p></u1:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: GillSans, serif;">"Dr Sirolli
has already been working in Smithton, George Town and Scottsdale to identify
new business opportunities with an emphasis on creating more jobs.</span><u1:p></u1:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: GillSans, serif;">"We are
currently working with the Huon Valley Council to convene a local community
forum in the coming days to introduce Dr Sirolli to the people of the Huon
Valley.</span><u1:p></u1:p><br />Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-57352416797363797192012-05-28T09:50:00.003-07:002012-05-28T09:50:50.520-07:00Sirolli Enterprise for the people<br />
<em>as reported by Tim Walker of 936 ABC Hobart</em><br />
<br />
Earlier this year the state government announced the $950 000 investment in community enterprise facilitation by the Sirolli Institute, for the Northern Tasmanian towns of Scotsdale, Georgetown and Smithton. Yesterday it was announced that the Huon Valley region shall be included in the program that aims to draw out the entrepreneurs in the community, and identify new business opportunities with an emphasis on creating more jobs.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/05/24/3510537.htm?site=hobart" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ernesto Sirolli in Tasmania to facillitate entrepreneurial activity in regional areas.</a>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-4019379054799375692012-03-27T08:39:00.003-07:002012-03-27T08:49:23.658-07:00Blaenau Gwent firms offered skills help by volunteers<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F4Z5LBgiGzU/T3HgZ4VoFeI/AAAAAAAAABY/QrmNuEiLF_4/s1600/Moe%2BForouzan.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724603336589055458" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 112px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F4Z5LBgiGzU/T3HgZ4VoFeI/AAAAAAAAABY/QrmNuEiLF_4/s200/Moe%2BForouzan.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div>By Andy Roberts BBC News </div><br /><div><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Moe Forouzan (right) visits local firms to find out what help they need </span></div><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /><div><br /></span></div>Aspiring businesses in one of Wales' unemployment blackspots are being offered skills and advice by local volunteers under a new support scheme.<br />Effect Blaenau Gwent visits local firms to learn about areas of expertise they are lacking, from marketing to bookkeeping, finance or premises.<br />It then goes back to a panel of local volunteers to see if they have the necessary skills or resources to help.<br />The idea of Enterprise Facilitiation was first tried in rural Australia.<br />Devised by Dr Ernesto Sirolli, the aim is to engage the local community in supporting new firms and would-be entrepreneurs with their skills and expertise.<br />One of the key figures in Blaenau Gwent is Moe Forouzan, the project's "enterprise facilitator", backed up by a grant-supported board representing the private, public and voluntary sectors.<br />Working on the move, without an office of his own, the former council economic development officer from Abertillery serves as a point of contact for local companies seeking help. <br /><div><br /><br />He said: "We have a lot of people approach us that say, 'I'm stuck, I don't know where to go, I need support in marketing I need help in finance, I'm finding it difficult to find premises'.<br />"This is where then I tap into our local network - this network can specialise in so many areas from marketing, to accountancy, to finance, to general business issues that any business may need support in. </div><br /><div><br />"The aim of it is to create a robust economy where we can create jobs and watch our businesses develop and grow.<br />The scheme involves a 60-strong panel of local volunteers with different skills and expertise who meet monthly to hear of the needs of firms and to discuss how they can help. </div><br /><div><br /><strong>The scheme aims to support sustainable business</strong> </div><br /><div><br />Mr Forouzan said if no-one on the panel has the right skills, they will try to put the client in touch with someone else locally who can help them, often free of charge - anything from a marketing plan to a second hand till. </div><br /><div><br />"To quote Dr Sirolli, the death of the entrepreneur is solitude - that's why a lot of these firms fail," he says.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>'Build a team' </strong></div><br /><div><br />"We're saying, concentrate on your passion - the product or the service - and we'll try and build a team around you."<br />It is thought to be the first scheme in Wales based on Enterprise Facilitation, which has already been introduced in countries on every continent since the first project in western Australia began in 1985.<br />So far, in its first year of operation, Effect Blaenau Gwent has helped nearly 140 different clients, ranging from people with business start-up ideas to established small firms and social enterprises.<br />Mr Forouzan said the project was in its early days but plans to hold a celebration of its work so far at an event in Ebbw Vale in April.<br />"My passion is to make Blaenau Gwent a better place - we're always hearing about the negative things," he says.<br />"I want to bring jobs to the area and to help people with ideas.<br />"A lot of people are quite lost at the moment - in Blaenau Gwent there's increasing hardship and almost an anti-enterprise culture.<br />"We have to break through those barriers." </div>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-39246841079631273142012-03-07T09:04:00.003-08:002012-03-07T14:00:57.269-08:00Ernesto Sirolli to help transform regional economies in Tasmania<em>announcement by: Laura Giddings, MP Premier</em><br /><em><br /></em>Regional communities will be given the skills and expertise to grow and diversify their economies with the help of community development pioneer Dr Ernesto Sirolli.<br />The Premier, Lara Giddings, said $950,000 had been committed to implement Dr Sirolli’s successful economic development model in Smithton, Scottsdale and George Town.<br /><br />Ms Giddings said The Parliamentary Secretary for the North West Economy, Brenton Best, had been instrumental in bringing Dr Sirolli to Tasmania.<br /><br />“Dr Sirolli was first brought to Tasmania by the Tasmanian Council of Social Service in 2010. Mr Best subsequently invited him to return to Tasmania and visit these regional areas last year.<br /><br />“By harnessing the passion, determination, intelligence, and resourcefulness of local people, Dr Sirolli is able to produce remarkable results,” Ms Giddings said.<br /><br />“In 1985 he helped transform Esperence in Western Australia, which had been suffering from major economic restructuring similar to regional communities across Tasmania.<br /><br />“Since then more than 250 communities across the world have engaged Dr Sirolli to help transform the skills and enthusiasm of their population into real business opportunities.”<br /><br />Ms Giddings said Smithton, George Town and Scottsdale had been particularly hard-hit by the downturn in the forest industry and pressure on major manufacturing operations arising from the high Australian dollar.<br /><br />“The Government has been working closely with the Scottsdale community following the closure of its softwood sawmills and I believe the Sirrolli model will complement the work that has been done by the Dorset Economic Development group and the local council.<br /><br />“We also know that the George Town community is facing a period of uncertainty. We remain hopeful that we will see construction of a pulp mill which will create thousands of new jobs but it is also important that we support and nurture other business opportunities.<br /><br />“These communities are suffering due to the downturn in the forest industry and the pressure on our major manufacturing operations arising from the high exchange rate.<br /><br />“But they still have so much to offer, and nobody should ever write them off.<br /><br />“I know the people in these communities. They are hard-working and resilient.”<br /><br />To assist in the transformation the State Government will fund a permanent on the ground presence in these communities over the next two years.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://www.media.tas.gov.au/release.php?id=34389">Read More:</a></strong>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-70952069163620680602012-03-06T07:39:00.002-08:002012-03-06T07:45:23.044-08:00Conversation with Marise Ciprianias interviewed by Tonya Bina - Granby, CO<br /><br />How does a young girl from the megalopolis of São Paulo, Brazil, end up owning a ski resort in rural Colorado?Marise Cipriani grew up in a family of four girls, but she — the third born — was set to become an educated businesswoman who followed in the steps of her grandfather and father, two highly successful entrepreneurs.Her father founded and owned the third largest airline in Brazil, TransBrasil; her grandfather, of Italian descent, started one of the largest meat and food processing companies in the country, originally Sadia, now through a 2009 merger called Brasil Foods, which has since grown to be a global operation.Cipriani refused to accept the notion that women don't belong in the male-driven business world of her time. She started working in her father's office at the age of 11 and worked her way up to eventually own her own advertising and marketing agency in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil. She didn't truly learn English until she was in her 20s, when her own family relocated to Miami. The Ciprianis have two children, Melissa and Gui, who in their early 30s share time between Brazil and the states.<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#006600;">Today, this savvy businesswoman is the owner and operator of Granby Ranch , the founder of the nonprofit organization Kapoks, which is dedicated to Sirolli Institute principles for fledgling entrepreneurs, and a key figure in bringing this concept to the town of Granby</span></em>.<br /><br />Tell me about your family:My (paternal) grandfather came from a very, very poor family. He had to leave school when he was in second grade because he had to help his father work in a hayfield. He was so poor his first pair of shoes was when he was 9 years old. But he was a brilliant businessperson and an entrepreneur at heart. Very young, without going to school or anything, 19, 20 years old, he started a business. He had this idea of getting pigs, in a small town in the middle of Santa Catarina, like a small town in the middle of Nebraska, he would fatten the pigs, then go three days in the train, sell the pigs in São Paulo, buy goods he didn't have in the little town, buy flour, plates, then sell them.Brasil Foods today process 450,000 poultry per hour, it has 115,000 employees, it exports all over the world. It has great trademark recognition in a lot of countries.Did your father go into this business?My grandfather wanted my father to go into this business, but my father was crazy about aviation. (My grandfather) sent my father to a boarding school in São Paulo, where the airplanes would land at one of the airports. He got absolutely crazy about aviation, and wanting to be a pilot, became an incredible pilot, and he started an airline, TransBrasil. It doesn't exist today anymore. The airline was such a big part of him. We always joked that the airline was the fifth daughter.My grandfather never wanted to hear about the airline because he wanted my father to be an engineer, not a pilot, but my father had this great idea, transporting the goods that he was producing by airplane. He made the airplane (Douglas DC-3s from the war) half passenger and half cargo, to be able to sell (the food) fresh. There were no roads or refrigerated trucks in those times, so to be able to fly in a couple of hours, Sadia had a great boom, it suddenly had a big market, because it was able to sell to São Paulo. vvvvvThe reason I'm saying all that is because those two men were very important for me as entrepreneurs. When I think about the program we're doing about enterprise facilitation here, I think I'm lucky, because I had examples in business.I always wanted work when I was growing up. I was the one wired like this, my sisters didn't want to work.It started at 11. It started with my father, I would go to work at the airline. My first job was serving cafezinho in the office. After that, I graduated to being a filing person. And then when I went to start college, I went at night to be able to work during the day. And I started in marketing and advertisement for the airline. Then eventually I had my own ad agency, in São Paulo, at 21.What was it called? Intermarketing. It was fun, I loved it.<br /><br />Everything I learned I learned working. I think my father ended up learning to respect me as a business person. I would just show up in meetings because I needed to learn. The last conversation I had with my dad, I was talking about Granby Ranch, and (Marise chokes back tears) he said, ‘I don't know how you do it.' I said, ‘I learned from you.'So, he really respected you..He did. But it took him awhile. I don't know if I told you but I am a pilot also. And my father was an amazing pilot.Did your dad teach you?He didn't. It was funny because he didn't want me to take my pilot's license. It's not something a girl would do, you know. So I just did it. And I never told him. I did it when I was living in Miami. I wanted to learn on the same kind of airplane that he learned on 40 years before, which was a J-3 Cub. So one day he arrived, and I said I have a surprise for you. So I took him to this little airport and said we're going to fly, and we went flying. It was special. It was really neat.<br /><br />I met my husband at 20 at TransBrasil. He worked in the legal department. Then he was transferred to the United States, and it was only supposed to be for one year because TransBrasil wanted to open a purchasing office in Miami for spare parts for airplanes. So we came for a year, but then one year became two, and I started working in sales for the airline. We made connection with Pan Am; but eventually TransBrasil started flying to the states. The airline ceased around 1990. That's when I started to coming to Colorado.How did you come to know Colorado?When Gui was about to turn 3, we went to Italy, and a friend of ours said let's go skiing. I had never seen snow, I lived in Florida, and I'm from Brazil, I maybe saw snow in New York a little bit, but not snow (sitting on the club level upstairs in Base Camp One, Marise gestures to the snowy slopes at Granby Ranch's ski basin).I was the one who fell in love with skiing. So I came back to Florida, and I had a friend who was a skier, and I asked where is the best place to ski in the U.S., and he said Vail, Colorado.We made a booking, and we ended up in Beaver Creek. I really started learning to ski, my kids did too, and we fell in love with it and ended up buying a place in Beaver Creek. I was one of those fanatics. I would be the first one on the lifts, and the last one off. I did workshops, I did lessons, I had goals to do all Birds of Prey. I spent one of my summers in Beaver Creek with my children, and a lot of nephews, the whole family in Brazil.It was a good time to buy property, so I started buying property in Beaver Creek, and started building. I had a couple of spec homes. So I guess that's when I became a developer without even knowing. Because we were doing all that, a broker in the Beaver Creek area said there is this place for sale in Grand County, do you want to look?<br /><br />Here (Granby Ranch) is to create a place so people, family, would have the same experience I had with my children in summers and winters in Colorado in Beaver Creek. Really, it's what I think were the best memories I have. When I look at the pictures of the time of us hiking and of us spending time together, and skiing, it was so amazing, it was something I wanted to build again. It's a feeling I can't really describe. Like when you have a memory so strong on you that it brings you happiness just thinking about it ... This connection between us, family and nature.And what is your husband's involvement with Granby Ranch?He doesn't unfortunately. When we started, it was for us to have our life project, but things happened and there were things he had to be in Brazil for. When we both left the airline, my husband started mining; he is a partner in mining, several mines. The only thing with my husband and I is we have an incredible relationship. It's funny because he lives there and I live here, but we talk I think sometimes more than couples that are together all the time. How did Kapoks come about?My husband just started a new mining project, in the northernmost part of Brazil, in the state of Amapa. When I got there, I was devastated with the town. All sorts of problems. Basic stuff, from sewer running down the streets with 3- and 4-year-olds stepping on it, youth prostitution, lots of problems. I said we need to do something about it. We can't start a project that will be here for 20 years and not think about this town being part of it. It's the same thing here, we are all community, you can't separate one from another. I wanted to create a nonprofit, which is Kapoks, which doesn't have any funding yet. (It was set up to have profit-sharing with the mining operation) but they don't have any profit yet. The town is called Lourenço, or St. Lawrence, which is the saint that protects the miners.Sirolli for me, it's just perfect. For me as a very young person, there were two things very clear in my mind. I love business, and love doing things for people. So with those two things together, it's a way of helping people without belittling them, and it's promoting the entrepreneurial spirit. I want to do something with these women so they feel empowered, especially with the amount of prostitution they have there. Walking down the village, I saw an image that is so strong for me. There is a little girl, her hair is curly, she's in the middle of the street. And she is standing, and in front of her there are three chairs, and there's little kids sitting there, and she is teaching them. It was so amazing to see, she has something of her, we just need to do something so that it doesn't die, so when she grows she can be a teacher, or have a school.I always keep that image in my head. It was very powerful.Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-60961122937654105862012-02-29T14:12:00.001-08:002012-02-29T14:17:46.578-08:00Entrepreneurship the means to get good things done, says Ernesto Sirolliby Russ Grayson…<br /><br /><span style="color:#009900;">I’M FILLED WITH INSPIRATION</span> as I write these words after spending two hours with about 60 others at Town Hall House in the presence of <a href="http://www.sirolli.com/About/DrErnestoSirolli/tabid/110/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Ernesto Sirolli</a>.<br />I first encountered Ernesto in the ’90s through his book, <a href="http://managingwholes.com/review-ripples.htm" target="_blank">Ripples in the Zambesi</a>, which I think I bought from <a href="http://pacific-edge.info/permaculturepapers_introductory_notes/" target="_blank">Permaculture International Journal</a> when it was based next to the Lismore City Farm.<br /><span style="color:#009900;"><strong>Aid can be anything but<br /></strong></span>The title of Ernosto’s book comes from his time working for an Italian NGO in Africa. Without consulting the local people who the NGO was supposedly helping, they planted a tomato crop on the banks of the Zambesi River. But one morning they woke to a surprise… all of those tomatoes they had planted… they were gone… as if some animal… some tomatovore… had eaten sneaked up and eaten them in the night. But where were the clues as to the fate of the missing tomatoes? There was nothing… all there was were ripples out there in the river as if there was something just below the surface… but surely that had nothing to do with the disappeared tomatoes? Though… just what was that out there? What it was, was a wallow of hippos, their big eyes just breaking the surface… hippos no longer hungry but replete after a good and rather unanticipated feed of freshly-planted tomatoes. The NGO workers had failed to do the obvious—ask the locals about local conditions, and whether there was anything out there on the plains or in the Zambezi that would look kindly on a feed of fresh vege fruit.<br />As Ernesto tells the story, their misadventure with the tomato crop was the start of his seeing the whole aid enterprise as a bit of a misadventure. Disillusion quickly followed , disillusion with foreigners telling locals what they needed, what was good for them, not even asking local people if they wanted to receive aid.<br />Ernesto is a passionate man and he tells the story with a great deal of emotion. Listening, you come to understand how his experience in the aid industry was formative of his later work. Aid in general, he said, has been a disaster.<br />You don’t show up with a briefcase full of solutions when you do not know the problems<br />Those ripples in the Zambesi was what Ernesto started his Sydney Town Hall House presentation with and he expanded on the aid theme by warning against turning up in some lesser developed country and assuming you have the knowledge, the right even, to start to tell locals what they should do for their own good. Who do you think you are to do this, he asked.<br />Two things have to happen before you engage in aid work, said Ernesto. First, you have to be invited into the community. Second, you have to listen to people. This means disregarding any belief you entertain that you have the answers when you barely understand the problem. When people ask for your help, then you ask them how you can help. “You don’t show up with a briefcase full of solutions when you do not know the problems”.<br />But how do you get invited into communities in other countries? “You do something fantastic in your own neighbourhood”, he said. “You do something here in Sydney that people in other cities will call you and ask how you did that… then they will say ‘Please come and teach us’”.<br />As I sat there listening to Ernesto, that message about starting aid work at home, where you live, resonated with me because I had heard it before. That would have been around the time I had the good fortune to encounter Ernesto’s book on the shelves there in the Lismore office of Permaculture International Journal.<br />The person I heard it from was <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Badri-Dahal/1079981999" target="_blank">Badri Dahal</a>, at the time the manager of the indigenous NGO, Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Nepal (INSAN). INSAN is one of those largely forgotten permaculture projects, you don’t hear much of it now, but it was pioneering and it had an impact of those of us who had the fortunate chance to meet Badri. What Badri said was similar to what Ernesto told the audience that day—start by helping yourself, in your own country, before dashing off imagining you can help people in less developed countries. It was a warning against allowing a very limited amount of knowledge imparted by a permaculture design or other course, especially if there is little practical work to follow it up, leading to the belief that it would be sufficient to teach people how to grow food or to do something else with their lives. It’s like the cliche says—a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.<br />As for dashing off to help people in lesser developed countries, Ernesto put it this way: “If people don’t want to be helped you leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid”.<br /><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Working in Australia<br /></span></strong>Ernesto is a middle aged man with thick, wavy hair and a strong Italian accent despite his years in Australia and, currently, of living in the US. Dressed in his suit and tie, he looks like someone who has just left a business meeting.<br />That might not be an erroneous assumption, for his work with the<a href="http://www.sirolli.com/" target="_blank"> Sirolli Institute</a> is training people to set up businesses, whether for-profit <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_business" target="_blank">social businesses</a> or not-for-profit <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise" target="_blank">social enterprise</a>, as a means of making things happen.<br />He tells the audience the story of his enterprise facilitation work in Esperance, where he facilitated the setting up of small businesses when the town was headed full speed along the economic downhill run following government limitations on the tuna fishery that put people out of work. It was a cascading disaster, as he tells it. Catch limitations meant fewer fish which affected the fish processing plant which led to redundencies which flowed through to the other businesses in town and suddenly once-employed people found themselves in poverty. They couldn’t sell up and move to Perth because their properties lost value as the town’s economic prospects nosedived.<br />Council staff and other social gatekeepers explained to him that people in Esperance didn’t want to help themselves and, anyway, ” …no one wanted to do anything. The government employment service said I would make a fool of myself… people in Esperance didn’t have any ideas of heir own”, explained Ernesto. In the end, it was these gatekeepers who proved devoid of ideas and imagination when Ernesto facilitated new, small businesses among people who had lost their livelihoods.<br /><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Beginnings<br /></span></strong>For Ernesto, it started in 1975 when he picked up a book by an English economist. This book, he explained, chaged his life… it changed how he saw the world and how he acted in it. By the time he reached the last page and closed the book, his life was set on a new course, a course that he is still following. What book was this that could change lives so easiy? None other than EF Schumacher’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful" target="_blank">Small is Beautiful</a>.<br />If evidence that Schumacher’s messages are as relevant today as they were when he wrote the book in the late 1960s, there is none better than it having been in print for all of those years from first publication. It affected many of us and gave us a new framework through which to act in the world, and it led to these setting up of the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/urbanupgrading/upgrading/resources/organizations/IT.html" target="_blank">Intermediate Technology Development Group</a> in the UK.<br />Following his disillusion with the aid industry and long before he landed in Western Australia, Ernesto had gone to South Africa to study and here he came under the influence of thinkers like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow" target="_blank">Maslow</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers" target="_blank">Rogers</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm" target="_blank">Fromm</a> and others who influenced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_psychology" target="_blank">Humanistic Psychology</a>. Coming to Australia, he was supervised in his PhD, itelf influenced by Schumacher’s ideas, by the now-noted urban planning educator and author, <a href="http://humanities.curtin.edu.au/about/staff/index.cfm/p.newman" target="_blank">Peter Newman</a>. Newman has written extensively on planning and sustainability, including his recent book, <a href="http://resilientcitiesbook.org/" target="_blank">Resilient Cities</a>. Ernesto’s studies led him to the belief that people have a wish to improve themselves in some way, to be a better person. This, Ernesto says, is not culture-specific but is universal and is to do with self-actualisation.<br /><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Changing the world one passion at a time’<br /></span></strong>It is not ideas that change the world, according to Ernesto. It is passion. And you find this even in ghettoes, he says, citing the Esperance example for his notion of ‘changing the world one passion at a time’.<br />Those working in the social sector know of the perils of reliance on grants to keep their projects going and some, such as social entrepreneur, Nic Frances (who described the evolution of his thinking and his work in his book, <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741752632" target="_blank">The End of Charity</a>), realised that the small business model, whether that was a for-profit business with social goals, what is known as a ‘social business’, or a not-for-profit social enterprise, offered a solution to getting off the grant applciation writing cycle.<br />In urban development, he says, he would like to see ‘urban hubs’, centres for enterprise facilitation in new developments where we can help each other find what we need. This would be a convivial intervention in the urban environment “where people get to know each other”.<br />This is Ernesto’s realisation too, and in presenting his ideas to the audience he said there are three things necessary to setting up and running a business, whether for-profit or a social enterprise:<br />the product or service has to be ‘beautiful’<br />marketing and sales have to be ‘beautiful’<br />financial management has to be ‘beautiful’.<br /><span style="color:#009900;">Business is team work<br /></span>The challenge: an individual cannot do all of these things themselves. They might try, but unless their passion is in all of them, those lacking passion are likely to be only part-done. The implication of this is that small business is teamwork, it is a social activity. Look at the well known businesses that were garage start-ups and you find that two to four people were involved.<br />“Form the team”, Ernesto tells the audience. “Don’t force people to do what they dont like”. This suggests the wisdon of allowing specialisation. He suggests we can now find people with the needed skills online.<br />“Even the word ‘entrepreneur’ has been hijacked. It is not necessarily to do with business. What it really means is an entrepreneur is someone with initiative, someone who seeks opportunity”.<br />To help people make things happen and to fulfill his proposal that “the more of us that create the future the better we all are”, Ernesto offers the <a href="http://www.sirolli.com/Training/tabid/57/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Enterprise Facilitation</a> model of training. In urban development, he says, he would like to see ‘urban hubs’, centres for enterprise facilitation in new developments where we can help each other find what we need”. This would be a convivial intervention in the urban environment “where people get to know each other”.<br />Addressing the question about urban development of a council staffer in the audience, Ernesto said he ” …despairs of rules set up never to be changed… planners are the people who stop things happening… rules are made to be changed… we need to facilitate, not regulate… use your power in your work to do this”.<br /><strong><span style="color:#009900;">Reclaim the economy<br /></span></strong>The economy and the language of economics has been hijacked and we need to democratise these things. according to Ernesto.<br />“Even the word ‘entrepreneur’ has been hijacked. It is not necessarily to do with business. What it really means is an entrepreneur is someone with initiative, someone who seeks opportunity“. The word’s association with the excesses of the 1980s and the business eladers o that time has given it a negative meaning.<br />“Entrepreneurs are the pioneers, the explorers, the adventurers…<br />Ernesto says it is necessary to understand the difference between entrepreneurship and management because the two groups see the world differently and act differently in it.<br />“Entrepreneurs are the pioneers, the explorers, the adventurers. Managers are the settlers who come with their seeds and herds”.<br />In referring to the role of entrepreneurs, Ernesto’s closing remarks were motivating: “Break the monopolies… find suport… and storm the citadel”.<br /><strong><span style="color:#009900;">From public servant to civic entrepreneur<br /></span></strong>I asked Ernesto a question during the time set aside for that after his talk. It was this: How can we working in local government adopt roles as ‘civic entrepreneurs‘, which is like a social entrepreneur role within councils?<br />What he said was that we can become facilitators of what communities need and in that way make things happen.<br />It reminded me of something I had thought about some time ago—the difference, on being asked whether some idea should go ahead, between asking ‘why?’ and asking ‘why not?’. One response seeks justification while the other seeks ways to make it real.<br />I thought Ernesto’s talk would be inspiring and that is exactly how it turned out. Now it’s for us to decide whether we’re social entrepreneurs or managers, for there’s a dire need for people who are good at either. Entrepreneurs and managers are a natural team and we need to realise which we are at so that all can work for the common good.Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-24728412523359017262012-02-22T09:55:00.003-08:002012-02-22T10:06:36.786-08:00Dr Sirolli writes new book on Trinity of Management®If you thought 'Ripples for the Zambezi' was thought provoking business sense then don't miss out on ordering your copy of Dr. Sirolli's latest book: <strong>HOW TO START A BUSINESS & IGNITE YOUR LIFE - <em>A Simple Guide to Combining Business Wisdom with Passion</em></strong>.<br /><br />Order through Amazon:<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=sirolli&x=17&y=23">http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=sirolli&x=17&y=23</a>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-52756083258197862632011-12-06T12:24:00.000-08:002011-12-06T12:28:57.451-08:00Enterprise facilitation a win for business owners<em>By Barbara Shaw staff reporter Bancroft This Week</em><br />When the business awards were being handed out at Community Futures on Oct. 21 in Bancroft there was some serious support coming from one woman in the crowd. <br /><br />Glowing with pride and thrilled to celebrate the success of those working tirelessly to make their dreams come true in business, Darcelle Runciman would not have missed the event for the world.<br /><br />If you don't recognize the name, it's worth getting to know. <br /><br />Darcelle Runciman is heart and soul of the Hastings County enterprise facilitation initiative. This dynamic woman travels across the County meeting with business owners, those who are thinking about starting a business and those who are working on economic development.<br /><br />With her focus being on the methods developed by Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, Runciman works to help guide Hastings County residents "through the process necessary to assemble an effective business team, in order to equally address product, finance and marketing."<br /><br />Following the Sirolli model, Runciman is helping to build business and the theory is that this builds strong, sustainable community.<br /><br />Runciman has been doing this for a few years with the program launching in Hastings County in 2009. <br /><br />She has 127 clients, 24 businesses have been started, 52 jobs created, 762 types of assistance have been accessed, 18 businesses have been retained and a total of nine businesses have had a business tune-up.<br /><br />Runciman has a high volume of clients and she meets with them all across the County. She goes to them and works on their schedule. She listens to their dreams and ideas and then helps guide them to making the connections they need to make things work.<br /><br />"I work with people at all stages," Runciman says. "If you have an idea you can run it by me. Maybe you have a business that is ready to open or you have an existing business that you want to expand. We can help you connect with consultants and we can also help you find the funds for companies that want to expand."<br /><br />Runciman is a business coach and she still maintains a private practice but from Monday to Thursday she's meeting with entrepreneurs from Desoronto to Algonquin Park.<br /><br /><br />Runciman is quick to point out that the program is not so much about coaching as it is about facilitation. She's not doing all of the work, she refers out to consultants in the community.<br /><br />"I was meeting with a client in a coffee shop in Tweed and they called me a human Google," Runciman laughs.<br /><br />And that is a great way to describe what she does.<br /><br />When Runciman meets with you she asks guided questions to help you solidify your vision, to work through obstacles and then to help connect you with local people who can help you do what you need to do to thrive and survive in the creative economy of Hastings County.<br /><br />"I'm a connector of people," Runciman says. "Referrals are always made and I try to give my clients three resources to choose from."<br /><br />Runciman, for those who have worked with her, has celebrity status and it is not uncommon in business circles to hear people dropping her name in conversation. <br /><br />She has a knack for getting people from point A to point B and that's what makes her so valuable. Her clients are quick to gush about everything she has to offer.<br /><br />"I'm intuitive," Runciman says. "You're helping on a personal level first and then you work on the business. My biggest job is to teach the individual how to delegate so they stop doing everything. Community resources come into play so everyone spends back into the community."<br /><br />And this is how the program works so effectively.<br /><br />Runciman works with those who have often been working alone, trying to do everything themselves. She helps them figure out what they like to do and what they're good at doing and then she helps with referrals for things that the business needs. Local consultants are suggested and the business owner learns to share the work, the resources and the load. Everyone benefits.<br /><br />Runciman is confident in saying that the program has created half a million in new sales.<br /><br />"Business is business," Runciman says.<br /><br />One of the biggest things Runciman tries to communicate to her clients is the need for an online presence and she's happy to report that some of her clients are moving forward with this strategy. She's helping business owners ask questions like, "how does my business look to the outside world?"<br /><br />In addition to the connections and the sounding board that Runciman offers, her clients report that she's just a really positive, energetic woman. She's warm and nurturing, even when working through some tough issues with clients.<br /><br />Always humble, Runciman re-directs praise but does say that she enjoys the people she works with.<br /><br />"I care about people and there's nothing better than helping a business and getting them to take action and to see the results," Runciman says. "It's a rush."<br /><br />At the business awards on Oct. 21 MP Daryl Kramp announced secure funding for the Eastern Ontario Development Program (EODP) and this is good news for Hastings County because the EODP contributes to the costs of the program which is totally free for Runciman's clients.<br /><br />"It's like hiring a business coach," Runciman says. "But it's free for the client."<br /><br />Runciman knows her current clients know how valuable the program is and she's happy to report that some of the first businesses she helped are now coming back for help with expansion. <br /><br />Doing business in Hastings County and starting a business in Hastings County is very possible according to Runciman.<br /><br />"This is an area that is untapped," she explains. "We're at the point where business can start to get going but there's lots of prep work to be done. We don't want people to just jump in; we want to be there for them."<br /><br />Runciman's service is free and she can be accessed through the economic development office of Hastings County or through the CFDC in Bancroft. <br /><br />For those thinking about starting or expanding a business or even for those just starting to work on a dream, Runciman is available to help. It's great service and it's free, all you have to do is take action. And that's exactly what Runciman likes.<br /><br />"I have a passion for passionate people," Runciman says. "I love when people take action."Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-2309960315530997132011-10-26T08:17:00.000-07:002011-10-26T08:19:42.588-07:00Gardening economy or Jungle economy?The proponents of the ‘gardening’ economy should stop using ‘gazelles’ as a metaphor and start using broccoli and zucchini instead. If not they should rename the ‘gardening’ economy the ’jungle’ economy!<br /><br />Jokes apart I am all for the ‘gardening’ economy i.e. a tender, nurturing environment where the biggest enemies are snails and where ALL entrants to the entrepreneurial game are suitably nurtured. Picking winners in business is impossible because the variables are too many; when everything is perfect in your business, your partner runs away with your spouse, or a tsunami hits your town. <br /><br />Or you can get caught in a bubble, by investing in technology companies only because it is fashionable to do so.. Who is to say that tomorrow’ revolutions will not happen in the service industries or in a most obscure rural community? After all the biggest company in the USA today is a grocery shop that was started by Sam and Helen Walton in a remote rural community.<br /><br />It seems that reality continues to baffle the cleverly constructed theories of experts who try to pick winners, incubate talent and attract the cultural creative. In reality there is no geography to intelligence and no method to passion; the only hope is for generalized entrepreneurship. The survival strategy of gazelles is not to outrun cheetahs but to breed more. In economic development numbers count and we should promote a culture that encourages millions of people to transform their talents into a way to feed themselves and their families.<br /><br />Promoting is very different from planning; as the late Peter Drucker used to say: ‘Planning’ as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy... Innovative opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.<br /><br />AUTHOR: Dr. Ernesto SirolliDora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-46786520081233763002011-04-08T13:12:00.000-07:002011-04-08T13:40:18.580-07:00Enterprise Facilitation® - Independently Assessed Since 1988!The independent assessment of Enterprise Facilitation started immediately. When the Western Australia Government agreed to finance the first ever pilot project in the towns of Esperance and Geraldton in 1986 it demanded that an independent assessment of the pilot be conducted by the Department of Economics of the University of Western Australia. Funded by the Western Australian and the Federal Government the study titled: <span style="color:#009900;"></span><span style="color:#009900;"><br /><br />“LOCAL ENTERPRISE INITIATIVES: BETWEEN STATE AND MARKET IN ESPERANCE”<br /></span> by Dr. Jeremy Moon and Dr. Kelvin Willoughby was published in 1988.<br /><br />According to the Australian Journal of Public Administration: <span style="font-size:85%;">ISBN #DOI:101111/j.1467-8500.1990.tb02249.x</span> <br /><br />This paper draws on the findings of Moon and Willoughby (1988) commissioned by the Commonwealth Office of Local Government and the WA Department of Regional Development and The North West, but it remains the sole responsibility of the authors.” <br /><br /><strong>Abstract:</strong> This paper presents an analysis of the Esperance Local Enterprise Initiatives Committee, which is at the heart of an archetypal emerging pattern of local economic development distinct both from top-down statist models and from market alternatives. The model is composed of a mixture of state resources (notably finance, information and legitimacy), elements associated with entrepreneurialism, grass-roots orientation, bottom-up implementation, the pursuit of profit, and a network system which interlocks the ELEIC with different government departments and agencies. <br /><br />That first publication was followed, during the years, by a number of independent studies and the aim of which has been not only to understand the model but to come to a decision to invest in it. We have decided to list the Independent Reports on our website to make them available to all who wish to peruse them. The reports are published in their entirety and we have made no corrections or alterations to the text. <br /><br />Here is the list of the Independent Reports that we have found in our library, as others will become available we will post them. <a href="http://www.sirolli.com/Evidence/IndependentReports/tabid/189/Default.aspx">http://www.sirolli.com/Evidence/IndependentReports/tabid/189/Default.aspx</a> <br /><br />The reason why we have not displayed this material in a prominent fashion before has been my fault. I was under the misconception that one should not be focused on trying to satisfy critics, skeptics and naysayers. After all<span style="color:#000000;">,</span> every single new community that has established an Enterprise Facilitation project over the past 25 years had at its helm capable people who conducted extensive due diligence before paying good dollars for our training. To imagine that hundreds of civic leaders have been negligent over the years seemed to me absurd. <br /><br />Now however I see things differently. We are publishing all these independent reports not to satisfy the disbelievers but to honor our friends. To all who have believed in the value of Enterprise Facilitation and have used the approach over the years, here is additional evidence that your story of success was not an isolated occurrence but the natural consequence of believing in the intelligence and resourcefulness of your own people.<br /><br /> <em>“When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.”</em> William Blake<br /><br />author:Dr.Ernesto SirolliDora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-84947843592739313652010-12-09T14:25:00.000-08:002010-12-09T14:29:00.751-08:00Dino Pezzino was the Master Shoemaker that inspired Ernesto Sirolli’ work in 1980 in Western AustraliaTo Joe and Charlie Pezzino, to Dino’s family and friends.<br /><br /><br /><strong>In Death of Dino Pezzino<br /></strong><br />For the past thirty years Dino has honored me with his friendship. He was like an uncle to me and I went to see him every time I was in Western Australia. Dino was truly a great man. Generous, friendly and …funny! He was the force behind the Fremantle Shoemakers Cooperative and few people truly understood that he taught Australian unemployed kids for free, in the evenings and out of his great heart. He was taken to court by the Shoemakers Union because he was teaching unemployed kids without having a Ticket to do so. So Dino submitted himself to be examined by a panel of expert shoemakers, half of which he had taught the trade (!), got a Ticket and got the satisfaction of winning the court case. Not only did he win, the Judge highly praised his work, awarded damages against the Union and the Fremantle Shoemakers Cooperative, received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award for best job creation scheme in Australia in 1982.<br /><br />A master in his art, Dino commanded the respect, even the awe, of the men and women he taught. He started his apprenticeship in Sicily when he was fourteen years old in his uncle’s shop. His first job was to straighten used tacks that his uncle had used to make shoes. He became very good and his skills literally saved his life. As a prisoner of war he was interned at Buchenwald where he was asked whether he wanted to work or not. He offered to work and was sent to a factory that made shoes for the German army. Here during his lunch hours, with leather from the seat of a downed US Bomber, he made a pair of boots. A German officer took notice and asked whether Dino could make him a pair….very soon ALL the German officers wanted his boots and Dino was handsomely paid, in army rations!<br /><br />That’s Dino for you, the ultimate charmer, the friendly, funny, gifted artisan who only did, beautifully, what he loved to do.<br /><br />You were an inspiration Dino, travel well my friend. I know precisely who got to get a beautiful pair of Kangaroo leather’ moccasins, like the ones that I still have in my wardrobe. I never thought that I would be jealous of the Almighty because of an infinite supply of Dino’s shoes!<br /><br /><br />Ernesto SirolliDora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-52710303061971299362010-11-05T12:21:00.000-07:002010-11-08T10:26:50.902-08:00Teaching Artists How To Make Money<strong>Ernesto Sirolli addressed the JUNCTION 2010 ARTS conference in Tasmania on August 28, 2010.</strong><br /><br /><em>Ernesto Sirolli: the one who gets it </em><br /><br />What do unemployed hippies, an Italian shoemaker, a nun, Western Australian fishermen and a man who knows nothing about business have in common? Passion, creativity and the makings of powerful storytelling.<br /><br />Ernesto Sirolli's plenary address, Passion, entrepreneurship and the rebirth of local economies, had one simple but profound message: do what you want to do and find someone to do what you hate.<br />This straightforward message to the artists, community arts workers, business people and others in the audience was delivered lyrically, humorously and, like only the Italians can, with great gusto and feeling.<br /><br />Sirolli narrated his experiences of developing entrepreneurs in Western Australia in the 1980s. He believes that the idea of an entrepreneur has been hijacked by corporate language which two-thirds of the population doesn't understand. He suggested that the first thing we need to do is reclaim the word 'entrepreneur' and its original, fundamental meaning: an entrepreneur is someone who 'gets it first'; who is innovative and courageous.<br /><br />Through his engaging storytelling and grass-roots experiences, Sirolli urged the artists in the audience to dedicate their lives to finetuning their skills, to forget about trying to learn how to sell their work and to surround themselves with people they trust who can do that for them. That way, they return the gifts they have been given to the world.<br /><br />And his belief about the universality of human experience? Every man and woman at any given time in their lives has a wish to better themselves. You don't have to take ideas into communities or tell people what to do - the people there already know what to do. You only have to take your passion and listen - not arrive with a 'briefcase of answers' - to help people do what they want to do.<br /><br />What community wouldn't he inspire?<br /><br />Author: Wendy Newton of Flying ArtsDora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-60107718089821013432010-10-12T12:03:00.000-07:002010-10-12T13:12:29.502-07:00News from ENABLE Enterprise Facilitation® in North Liverpool<strong><br />The Journey so far...</strong><br />North Liverpool is a place full of passions, vibrant, gritty and always tough and there have been many “top-down” initiatives that have tried to do things for the area but ENABLE is set to utilise local imagination and passion, using the Sirolli model, so that the area, its people and its communities are the engine of a real transformation. When Ernesto Sirolli, full of charisma and stories of his belief in people and his “bottom-up”, counter-intuitive approach visited the area in early 2005 many were sceptical. Much talking and thinking took place. People from most of the local community organisations got involved and by the spring of 2006 there was sufficient determination and will to go ahead and appoint a Facilitator. The selection process was very thorough and exhaustive and our facilitator was appointed to start work in December 2006. Much still lies ahead. The quality and effectiveness of this will depend on the efforts of all involved. We are determined to build our Panel further but a lot has been achieved already. We can celebrate much especially: -<br /><br />That so many community organisations are firmly bedded into our work<br />That we have a good and positive culture and a set of core values that are respected<br />That our Facilitator has a growing and highly diverse band of clients – both existing businesses and new set-ups<br />That our belief that there is a strong flow of worthwhile business ideas awaiting expression in north Liverpool is now supported by evidence<br />That the special kind of highly personal support that we can offer is now making a real difference in many cases and is of the kind that is not available elsewhere<br />That a significant contribution is being made by the personal connections made amongst clients and with others.<br />That our Panel can repeatedly offer good and relevant ideas for our brainstorming<br />That our Panel has a wide spread of talent and is a place where hardnosed business people can engage and interact with community activists and public servants<br />That the Panel’s meetings are always accompanied by valuable informal exchanges of information<br />That our work is creating and enhancing a genuine “ripple effect” to create a distinctive culture of enterprise amongst people and communities that have long had a culture of dependency<br />That we are working in excellent harmony with the adjoining Sirolli projects.<br />That even at this relatively early stage successes are emerging that provide good role models and a base for convincing sceptical local businesses and people that the Sirolli methodology works.<br />What we have achieved to Date<br /><br /><strong>What we have achieved to Date</strong><br /><br />New Businesses Created in 2006/07 ~ 2007/08 ~2008/09 ~ 2009/10 TOTALS<br /> 0 13 19 3 35<br />Existing Businesses 7 23 11 2 43<br />Jobs Created 0 17 27 0 44<br />Beneficiaries 23 81 129 16 249<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-87508894008824956412010-09-17T10:57:00.000-07:002010-09-17T12:13:03.693-07:00Enterprise Development in Aboriginal CommunitiesGerhardt Pearson, 14/9/2010 9.45am<br /><br />Australian Aboriginal culture is the world’s oldest, continuous, living culture. Our people have always been traders, artisans, environmental guardians, managers, builders and entrepreneurs.<br /><br />When the Romans were conquering Britain in the year 43, when the Anglo Saxons took over in the year 410, when the Britons defeated the Anglo Saxons in 495, when the Vikings invaded in 793, when William the Conqueror took over England in 1066, when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, when the Black Death arrived in England in 1348, when Henry the VIII (Eighth) was marrying and beheading his wives, when the English were fighting a Civil War in 1642, when the Industrial Revolution was revolutionising manufacturing, throughout all these years, and back a further 20-30,000 years before England even existed as a known habitable region, over all these millennia, the Aboriginal people of Cape York, and from around Australia, were travelling, trading and living prosperous lives.<br /><br />Our Yolngu Aboriginal Colleagues in North East Arnhem land began the first commercial trade deals with China 400 years before European settlement in Australia, around the time of the European Renaissance. That commercial relationship continued, through the Maccassan fleet, every year until 1900. So set aside the common place concepts that Aboriginal people are not used to trade and commerce. Given the right incentives and opportunities we are as adept at business as anybody in the world.<br /><br />But Europeans were slow to appreciate our skills and knowledge. When Captain Cook first came into contact with my direct descendents, the Gugu Yimmidhirr people at Cooktown, he wrote in his journal “Some part of their Bodys had been painted with red, and one of them had his upper lip and breast painted with Streakes of white, which he called Carbanda. Their features were far from being disagreeable; their Voices were soft and Tunable, and they could easily repeat any word after us, but neither us nor Tupia could understand one word they said”.<br /><br />Even Cook, who must have felt like he was on the planet Mars, recognised the nobility of our people, but he did not recognise the way we did business.<br /><br />The 1860-1880s for the people of Cooktown and Cape York, was a period very similar to when the Romans, Vikings and Normans invaded England. But unlike the Britons, we had no experience of foreign, invading armies. We knew what raiding parties looked like. But these usually involved a couple of dozen warriors at most. Most of our wars occurred when wives were in short supply or when our lands were in drought, suffered natural catastrophes and we had to find new sources of food and supply far from our homelands.<br /><br />So we suffered very badly when William Hann discovered gold at the Palmer River in 1872. 35,000 miners invaded our country in 1873 and they took 26,600 kilos of gold from our rivers by 1912.<br /><br />The Palmer River Gold rush is widely regarded as the wildest, toughest, most ruthless gold rush in Australian history. Palmer made the southern gold rushes, the Eureka Stockade and the California gold rush look like a picnic. One of the reasons was because the gold was so accessible. Anyone with a pan could access the gold from our rivers and streams. It was a free-for-all in which only the toughest and most barbaric survived. There was widespread lynchings, battles between European and Chinese miners and my people were randomly killed, forced from their lands and tracked down by prospectors, vigilantes and police alike.<br /><br />Just, as during times of invasion in England, monasteries were a safe haven for nobles, the saviours, for many of my people, were three German missionaries Fierl, Schwarz and Poland. They created a safe haven at Cape Bedford, and many of our people were protected from police, vigilantes and indiscriminate violence, and survived there from 1886 to 1942.<br /><br />From 1886 to 1967 most of our people lived under some form of mission or State supervision. However I want to emphasise that throughout all of this period, Aboriginal families were extremely industrious. There are many stories to tell of this period. However it should be noted that Cape Bedford mission was self sufficient for most of its history, despite it being a very barren agricultural area, and all of its buildings and churches were created by Aboriginal labour. Similarly, after WWII, the entire town of Hopevale, and much of its infrastructure, was built by Aboriginal carpenters and family members.<br /><br />This was our period of learning about and adjusting to the European economy. Many of our people ran their own small businesses. My father ran the Hopevale butcher shop and he was a master of the art. Furthermore he knew about a few more cuts of meat than the European butchers. You see if you look at Aboriginal xray paintings you will see that one of the things that is set out there is the way to butcher native animals so that every piece of meat is used. There is also a long tradition of who gets what cuts of meat, how they can be traded and who they can be traded to, and in return for what. These trades came naturally to our people. (See Appendix One)<br /><br />The problem for many of our people was that during this long period of “protection” we could not be financially or economically independent. It may come as a surprise to many here to realise that even if we could build, trade, and earn good money from our businesses or our labour we were legally forbidden from accumulating capital and assets. No matter how talented you were, you could not enjoy the fruits of your labour. We were not allowed to own our own homes. My father had to write to the State protector of Aborigines in Queensland to make any withdrawals from his earnings or to purchase something as small as a boning knife.<br /><br />Imagine if you as small business people had to write to the Minister before you could spend any money on your businesses! Imagine if all of your wages and earnings were with-held from you!<br /><br />So I hope this gives you some insight into what drives Cape York elders, me and my brother Noel forward into economic development. We want to regain our freedom to trade and be entrepreneurs in our right. I hope this also helps you to understand why we are so concerned now in 2010 that our economic rights are again at risk by the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland. Just as we are reaching a time when Indigenous entrepreneurship is coming to the fore, when our children are excelling at their studies, and people are free to trade and to build capital and resources, our whole capacity to create enterprise is threatened by environmental legislation which is just as pervasive and destructive in its effects as the Palmer River gold prospectors.<br /><br />We do not fear real conservationists here. We are the original conservationists. We are simply against puritanical, anti-human ecologists. We fear that another regime will restrict our economic independence and will mean that the environmental gold of our rivers is only accessible through a poorly funded national parks service with token aboriginal rangers and businesses which are inevitably financed (albeit inadequately) by government.<br /><br />When we formed Balkanu – the Aboriginal Cape York Development Corporation - , in 1997, our goal was to create an organisation that would be an incubator for Aboriginal businesses and would fast track Aboriginal economic development into a new era. That was our dream and we have stuck steadfastly to it.<br /><br />There have been many, many challenges.<br /><br />One of our primary goals was to acquire, for traditional owners, the lands that were lost over the past two hundred years. For those who are not familiar with the complex world of Aboriginal land ownership, our job was separate to, but complimentary to, the Cape York Land Council.<br /><br />Above and beyond native title questions, which is the domain of the Land Council, we have worked with government and private land holders<br /><br />• to develop Indigenous Land Use Agreements,<br /><br />• to authenticate traditional land ownership,<br /><br />• we have facilitated land tenure arrangements and<br /><br />• most importantly, we have on some occasions managed to directly buy back lands in the commercial market place that are outside the jurisdiction of native title settlements on behalf of traditional owners. Most of our traditional land that is of commercial value has needed to be bought back via the commercial real estate market. So this on its own is a monumental task.<br /><br />Just dealing with the land issues would have consumed any ordinary organisation. But you can imagine how important this work is to our people. We are acquiring access, protecting or buying back the lands that were held by our grandparents and great grand parents but stripped away from them without any fair renumeration or compensation. For the great great grand children and grand children this is a very important job.<br /><br />A second area of our work is to acquire a good mix of large and small commercial operations that will create long term economic prosperity in the form of income, jobs, training and skill development for our people. In this area we have had some successes. Balkanu owns and manages the Cape York Digital Network that delivers world class broadband digital communications across the major regions of Cape York Peninsula. So we are the equivalent of Telstra for the sixteen Aboriginal communities of Cape York and we provide access to everything from wireless hotspots to community internet centres to videoconferencing to remote accounting and health consultations. Over the next few years we hope that CYDN will become a real commercial force on the Cape that helps our kids become real citizens of the 21st century.<br /><br />We have also been working for more than a decade on several large infrastructure projects including the Mossman Gorge Gateway project that will create a visitor centre and business hub for our people as well as provide better facilities for the more that 600,000 people who visit the Gorge each year. At Wujal Wujal at the other end of the Daintree rainforest we have also worked very closely with the Aboriginal Council to create a similar but smaller gateway project to the sacred waterfall that is also very well known to many of the international and national visitors to our region.<br /><br />I could mention many other large and medium sized projects that Balkanu has supported, advocated and developed but I want to now focus on something that is at the heart and soul of this conference and the heart and soul of Balkanu. When you consider the scale and scope of Balkanu’s operations you might think that small and micro business were something that might be an after thought for us. But I can assure you that is not the case.<br /><br />As you all know, if there are not small, family businesses or even micro sized individual businesses in your community, you can have all the big developments you like, and they will never directly touch ordinary people’s lives, aspirations and day to day reality. That is why for us Aboriginal small and micro business owners are very much heroic, front and centre enterprises, that we want to get behind at every opportunity.<br /><br />I want to mention three businesses today that are renowned in the cut-throat, competitive Cairns tourist marketplace. The first is the Kubirri Warra brothers Linc and Brandon Walker and their family at Cooya Beach. The second is the Walker Sisters tour of the Bloomfield Falls at Wujal Wujal. The third is Nugal-warra elder Willie Gordon’s remarkable Guurbi tours.<br /><br />These three remarkable Aboriginal micro businesses are linked together in a partnership with Adventure North to create a BAMA way tour from Kuyu Kuyu (Cooya Beach) to Wungaar Wari (Hopevale/Cooktown). (See Appendix two) Every single day of the week, rain, hail or shine, tourists from all over Australia and the world, come to hear and experience the skills and understanding of our people through these micro-businesses and to learn about our 40,000 years of cultural knowledge. For many, it is the most important part of their trip to not only North Queensland, but Australia.<br /><br />Linc and Brandon, the Walker Sisters and Willie Gordon are real ambassadors for our people that bring enormous benefits to our communities through their work. Without them the big infrastructure projects, the big commercial operations and even the acquisition of lands do not mean anything to our grass roots communities and people.<br /><br />Of course there are many other small and micro Aboriginal businesses throughout the Cape. Our job at Balkanu is to create the framework and supporting infrastructure that enables them to multiply and flourish.<br /><br />But small and micro-business development is very different and a very specialised sphere of operations. I became the inaugural Chairman of the ISX (www.isx.org.au <http:>) back in 2004, on top of my duties at Balkanu, to learn as much as I could about creating Aboriginal small and micro business throughout Australia. We were inspired by the model of social entrepreneurship in the UK and the USA and also, most particularly, by the great economist Muhammad Yunus. Yunus you will remember transformed aid and development work, through the Grameen Bank which makes commercial loans of as small as $A200 to Bengladeshi women. Yunus and Grameen transformed whole communities by creating hundreds of flourishing micro-businesses.<br /><br />The situation here in Australia is very different. For a start the income scale and differentiation is different. Bengladesh does not have a welfare system like Australia’s that generally guarantees an income of roughly $20,000 per annum in family and individual payments. $200 is about 4 days payments from Centrelink. So building an asset base with $200 is not enough of an incentive for people to move from welfare to business. This incidentally is why many aid agencies prefer to invest their small development funds in third world countries and not Australia. They perceive they can do more good for more people outside of Australia than inside Aboriginal communities.<br /><br />But though the scale is different, many of the principles of Yunus’s Grameen Bank do apply. Yes there are micro business entrepreneurs in every one of Cape York’s Aboriginal communities. Yes with the right incentives and infrastructure they can become successful entrepreneurs that do transform their own and their families lives. Yes loans with commercial pay back terms can make a difference. Yes these loans need to be tailored to the traditional and family structures of businesses.<br /><br />So if this is the case, what do we now need to do to support small and micro businesses? Well, as everyone in this room knows, real organic small and micro businesses do not grow from economic textbooks. They do not grow up overnight. There is no homogenous formula for their development. They cannot be created from the top down. They evolve from the most elusive of human qualities: passion, self motivation, creativity and intelligence.<br /><br />Unfortunately we have too few business incubators that focus on individual passion, self motivation, creativity and intelligence. We have lots that focus on business opportunities, projects, “good ideas”, production, financial management and marketing. We have endless numbers of government grants that will fund business plans.<br /><br />But the great Italian small business guru <strong>Ernesto Sirolli </strong>(www.sirolli.com) says <strong>"A shift from strategic to responsive development can only occur, if we are capable of believing that people are intrinsically good and that the diversity, variety, and apparent randomness of their passions is like the chaotic yet ecologically sound life manifestations in an old-growth forest."<br /></strong><br />To carry on with Sirolli’s analogy, I can tell you that there are many people who are good at business who get lost in our renowned Cape York rainforest and who do not see the abundance of life and food and sustenance that are there. There are many people who are trained in formal economics who would not have recognised Willie Gordon or Linc and Brandon Walker or the Walker sisters as outstanding, commercially successful entrepreneurs.<br /><br />There would have been very few banks who would understand their business products or their needs. There are also very few formal government economic schemes that will take the time and make the effort, over many years, to work closely with the human dimensions of small and micro business.<br /><br />In addition we have to be very careful to nurture the human dimensions of small and micro businesses. You can provide money and infrastructure and business support; but if any of these things change the scale, change the passion or change the creativity of a small or micro business then sometimes the life can go out of the business.<br /><br />So all of these things make Aboriginal small and micro business development a task that requires great patience and skill.<br /><br />I am reminded of one of the outstanding Aboriginal business people and entrepreneurs of the Kimberley, Sammy Lovell. I met Sammy at the community trading floor of the ISX in Broome in May 2004. One of our colleagues asked one of small business developers from the Commonwealth government.: Would you provide a grant to someone who didn’t finish primary school, who used a passbook for his banking, who had no formal business plan for his business? The answer should have been: what other skills and opportunities does this person have to offer? But predictably the answer was: no! As such the most successful, internationally renowned, tourist operator of the Kimberley, Sammy Lovell and his family, would never have received any form of public small business support. Of course Sam and his family didn’t need it to be successful, but if we want to create more opportunities for Aboriginal entrepreneurs then these are the sorts of issues in Aboriginal small and micro business development we need to understand.<br /><br />We continue to work away at these issues at the ISX and at Balkanu. Let me make these final concluding observations:<br /><br />• There are no instant answers or solutions.<br /><br />• You have to work for a long period. Five to ten years is, I think, the kind of period which is realistic to create one successful, independent small business or micro business.<br /><br />• You have to be able to tailor capital, support and ideas to people and families. Above all, passion, self motivation, creativity and intelligence should be what we set our small business development compass to, certainly not to text book ideas of what a successful business or plan looks like.<br /><br />• Finally, to be successful there has to be Indigenous and European risk and commitment on the table. When these things are in the right balance then we have a strong possibility of small and micro business success.<br /><br />Thank you for listening and I hope that we at Balkanu and the ISX can look forward to working alongside, and with, many of you in the future.Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-2981295971452462292009-02-09T08:33:00.000-08:002009-02-09T08:36:17.533-08:00Free Market and Capitalism are not synonyms!Author: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli<br /><br /><br />I was checking the Internet when I came across a blog that used a quote from my book “Ripples from the Zambezi”.<br /><br />The quote was: “ ...an economic system which is beyond capitalism, that is a system which enhances the participation in the creation of wealth, not only its accumulation.<br /><br />Civic economy can be defined as the economy resulting from generalized reciprocity, from people helping people to succeed, with the understanding that the well-being of each member of the community is to everybody's advantage. Whereas unbridled capitalism destroys diversity, competition, and ultimately the market and has to be controlled with anti-trust laws, civic economy encourages diversity and supports small and medium companies and cooperatives with legislative and fiscal tools.<br /><br />The result is an entrepreneurial economy where reciprocity matters”.<br /><br />Someone, not a real name, left a comment that said, among many other things:<br /><br />‘It is not the "free market" that causes these problems. The free market IS diversity, it IS the economic definition of "perfect competition." “<br />.<br />I thought that the comments above where very much against the role of the government in the economy but I answered in the following matter to make a point; it seems to me that Free Market and Capitalism are used as if they where the same thing and the two terms interchangeable.<br /><br />Here is what I wrote, please let me know what YOU think.<br /><br />“I agree with you. It isn't the free market that is the problem”. In my quote I said: "Unbridled capitalism destroys diversity, competition etc. not the free market". There is a tendency to confuse <strong>FREE MARKET </strong>with <strong>CAPITALISM</strong> and I don't understand how this can be. Free market is probably as ancient as humanity itself whereas Capitalism is only as old as the existence of surplus capital. Nobody had any surplus capital to invest as early as the 1600. Before that maybe a few families, the Medici and the Rothschild’s, had enough surplus capital to lend to kings and queens, but 99.99% of the European, not to mention the world population, had no surplus capital to invest.<br /><br />Capitalism is NEW! And we are still learning what happens when it is left unchecked.<br /><br />In my book I make the case for a “civic economy” that promotes entrepreneurship. I believe that one million small businesses employing 2 people each is better that one business employing 2 million people. This is because if that one big business goes bust the economy looses two million jobs. Do I advocate smallness? No. Certain businesses have to be big for scale reasons. But to have all the chicken in the USA produced by one company, or the beef, the cars and the software would be suicidal. Fortunately in the USA there are anti trust laws that protect us from unbridled capitalism. And to be protected from it we desperately need because we cannot allow the free market to be destroyed whether by communism OR by unbridled capitalism.Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-49973374683719793242009-01-26T09:53:00.000-08:002009-01-28T14:16:31.883-08:00A very big load of horse manure… and the next entrepreneurial revolution!<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">author: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli</span><br /><br />Futurologists are people who speculate about the future. They have their own magazines, journals and conferences. One such conference was held in New York City in 1880 and the question that the futurologists addressed was the following: “What will New York City look like in 1980?” The consensus was that by year 1980 New York City would not exist anymore. The reason, according to the futurologists, was that to move the ever increasing population of New York in 100 years, 6,000,000 horses would have been needed, and the problems created by the manure would have been impossible to deal with!<br /><br />The preferred mode of transportation had been, for centuries, the horse and the horse could not meet the requirements of the new cities anymore…it was, like today’s cars, too polluting. Yet the average person could not imagine a future without them and Henry Ford famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said <strong>faster horses</strong>.”<br /><br />Instead by 1900 in the USA there were 1001 car manufacturing companies. <br /><br />Small, tentative, entrepreneurial and private sector the pioneers of automotive transportation started a revolution in response to both the market needs and wants. In fact they started a revolution in advance of market wants.<br /><br />Who are the entrepreneurs at work today? Where are they? What are they doing? Can we predict their appearance? Can we plan for them to appear when we want them to appear?<br /><br />We believe that we are confronted by many “horse manure” problems in the world and that the need for original solutions will be addressed, right now, by entrepreneurs that are all but invisible not only to the general public but to many economic development practitioners as well.<br /><br />What can be done to assist and expedite the work of entrepreneurs in our society? Old methods don’t work. Planning, for instance, is totally inadequate to the task as eloquently put by Peter Drucker who wrote: “Planning as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Innovation does indeed need to be purposeful and entrepreneurship has to be managed. But innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous, specific, and microeconomic. It had better start small tentative, flexible. Indeed, the opportunities for innovation are found, on the whole, only way down and close to events. (…) Innovative opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.”<br /><br /><strong>Facilitating Entrepreneurship</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>If entrepreneurs cannot be created nor planned what can the economic development professionals do? There are no doubts that the present economic and social crises will bring about a wave of innovations that are going to change, once again, the world we know. At the Sirolli Institute we believe that to be part of the change we have to be prepared to deal with entrepreneurs anywhere they may be, no matter how small, tentative or inexperienced.<br /><br />Enterprise Facilitation is about capturing the passion, energy and imagination of our own people in our own communities and advocating for generalized entrepreneurship, no matter where it occurs.<br /><br />It is also, and most importantly, about being prepared to offer, to a new generation of entrepreneurs, the management skills necessary to start AND sustain their ventures.<br /><br />The economist and philosopher Ernest Schumacher once wrote: “I can't myself raise the winds that might blow us, or this ship, to a better world. But I can at least put up the sail so that, when the wind comes, I can catch it.”<br /><br />We, economic development professionals, may not start the entrepreneurial revolution ourselves but at least we can prepare for it!<br /><br />Since 1985 Ernesto Sirolli and the Sirolli Institute have worked with hundreds of communities worldwide to build their capacity to respond to entrepreneurs. We do so by working closely with the existing civic leadership and by training them to deliver this second leg of economic development. The Institute trains local Enterprise Facilitators by either establishing a new position or by re-training existing personnel to carry out the facilitation role.Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-59925453580673412382009-01-09T08:33:00.000-08:002009-01-09T08:41:08.707-08:00Ernesto Sirolli on Africa and the first Enterprise Facilitation® project in the Democratic Republic of Congo<p><br />From 1972 to1977 I worked for an Italian Agency of Technical Cooperation with African Countries call ASIP. ASIP was one of a number of private sector Agencies created after the passage of the Pertini Act of Parliament of 1971. Under the new law young Italians were able to volunteer for two years of work in Africa in programs designed and endorsed by the Italian Foreign Office. The role of my Agency was initially a recruitment and training role for young volunteers but very soon we became involved in designing the Technical Cooperation programs in a number of African countries including Zambia, Kenya, Somalia, Algeria and Ivory Coast.<br /><br />What I experienced visiting our projects and our volunteers in Africa during the five years period was devastating. The experience shaped both my personal and professional life and Enterprise Facilitation®, the local economic and community development approach that we have developed over the past 30 years, is the direct result of it.<br /><br />We failed miserably in Africa .Every single project failed to sustain itself and often we damaged the local people by introducing practices and technologies that were antithetic to local mores and inappropriate to local needs.<br /><br />We started Training Farms by African rivers full of Hippopotami, only to see the crops eaten as soon as ripe, and we convinced the native people to come to work by “motivating” them with increasingly damaging enticements; from sunglasses and watches to beer and whiskey.<br /><br />The Foreign Office started a faculty of Medicine in Mogadishu. My Agency sourced the books in the USA, had them translated in Italian and then established Italian Classes for students who, being well educated middleclass Somalis, spoke English.<br /><br />During the period I came in contact with many foreign Aid Agencies working in Africa and I came to believe that it wasn’t only us Italians blundering in Africa. It seemed to me that all of donor nations had their own ideas of what the African people needed and were doing their blundering best to impose it onto them.<br /><br />We collectively failed, and some still fail in Africa, because we made plans in our own countries and then we superimposed our programs, technologies and practices to people who did not ask us for our help and who did not need what we thought they needed! Our programs were about us, not them and without buy in from the locals we were always reduced to reward, motivate, cajole and bully people to do what we wanted them to do.<br /><br />Instead of helping people do what they passionately wanted to do we paid them to do what we wanted done; as soon as the money would end the program would disappear!<br /><br /><br />Enterprise Facilitation is born of two ideas: </p><ul><li>Only go where invited</li><li>Help people do beautifully what they love doing</li></ul><p><br />The idea of “only going where invited” came from understanding the radical work of the German born economist Ernest Schumacher who, after working in Africa and Bangladesh in the sixties wrote “Small is Beautiful- Economics as if People Matter” (1973).<br /><br />He famously wrote: “If people do not wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid.” The implication is that we should only work with people who sincerely want to be helped and that we should wait to be invited before showing up with our own ideas.<br /><br />“Helping people do beautifully what they love to do” comes from studying Positive Psychology also called “Growth”, “Third Force” or “Humanistic” psychology. <br /><br />Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Adler, Fromm and a host of post Freudian and post behaviorist psychologists, hence Third Force, advocate a person centered, respectful approach to working with clients that is steeped in the belief that people are always striving for self improvement. The role of the “helper” is to “remove the obstacles” that are stopping the individual from “growing”. But the growth is unique to the individual and has to do with “their” needs and aspirations not the helper, the program managers, the Aid Agency or “society”.<br /><br />The idea is that better individuals make for better husbands, wives, parents and citizens and that by facilitating personal growth, by helping people become proud of their achievements for instance, everybody benefits including the community at large.<br /><br />Enterprise Facilitation is the result of thirty years community practice in facilitating the transformation of good business ideas into sustainable enterprises, but Facilitation, a la Carl Rogers, can be used in many other fields; from counseling to the delivery of education, social and health related services.<br /><br />If invited we, Sirolli Institute International, a non per profit organization based in the USA and Canada, train the community leadership to employ an Enterprise Facilitator who, for free and in confidence, helps anybody who wants to transform a talent or a passion in a way to feed his/her family.<br /><br />The first Enterprise Facilitator, Fabrice Ilunga Mujinga, was trained, and will continue to be trained, by the Sirolli Institute both long distance and during his regular visits to the USA. It is hoped that future projects in the African continent will be established with Assistance of our first African’ Enterprise Facilitator (who speaks French, English and Swahili on top of two local languages) as soon as he will have completed his training and at least one year practice in his community.<br /><br />For more information please contact us: info@sirolli.com</p>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-50120067819541948022008-11-24T09:22:00.000-08:002008-11-24T09:24:13.293-08:00Inspirational News from a Sirolli Institute Project ~ Inspired FuturesInspirational words of wisdom were the order of the day for budding entrepreneurs and community leaders attending the launch of Inspired Futures, a Bradford-based organisation established that aims to assist young businesses.<br /><br />Held recently at the Karmand Centre in Barkerend, BD3, the event featured a number of speakers as well as a number of exhibition stands from community and business organisations such as Community Works, BD3 4ALL and Inkopo.<br /><br />Keynote speeches were delivered by Shabir Hussein, who established the successful Akbar’s restaurant chain over 13 years ago and Sarah Joseph, founder and editor of Emel, the only mainstream Muslim lifestyle magazine.<br /><br />The proceedings, which attracted over 100 attendees, were opened by Richard Sara-Gray and Lukman Miah of Inspired Futures.<br /><br />“No one can be a perfect entrepreneur,” explained Richard “and as such we are here to help people build the right team in order to build the right business.<br /><br />“In Bradford we have some of the most wonderful entrepreneurs around and a real indomitable spirit. It’s upto organisations like Inspired Futures to help these people realise their true potential,” added Richard.<br /><br />Lukman echoed those words: “Inspired Futures is here to positively influence the local economy and the community at large.”<br /><br />Shabir Hussein, who founded Akbars aged just 18 and now has restaurants in a number of major cities, explained how he realised his dream: “It’s all about having goals and backing that up with the passion to achieve them.<br /><br />“When I opened my first small restaurant on Leeds Road in 1995 I had a clear goal of establishing Akbar’s as a well known regional brand within five years and we achieved that. I’m now focused on getting the Akbar’s brand into 15 major UK cities and we are well on the way to realising that,” added Shabir.<br /><br />Sarah Joseph set up Emel in 2003 and she has since gone on to carve out a visible media profile that has placed her as one of most recognised Muslim businesswomen.<br /><br />“Every small business is a seed for its local community that will thrive with the right nurturing,” exclaimed Sarah “and will, in time, prove to be very fruitful.<br /><br />“Everyone of us has skills and talents that should be pursued but the biggest barrier to our success is ourselves.<br /><br />“I call it the whisperer who is there to put doubts in our mind as to what is and isn’t possible. You have to keep going and believe in what you are doing wholeheartedly,” added Sarah who made a clear distinction between maximising profits and optimizing profits.<br /><br />“Maximising profits is all about squeezing the last penny out of your venture whereas optimising profits is a more holistic approach that takes into account your own lifestyle, happiness and the needs of the wider community.<br /><br />“I adhere to the latter and despite all of the demands of running a business and a growing family I still get a great deal of excitement out of putting Emel together,” she said.<br /><br />Bradford City Councillor Jeanette Sunderland was delighted by the event which also featured the launch of Inside Directions which is aimed at helping women develop their own business ventures.<br /><br />“This is very much the launch of a new collaborative way of doing business in Bradford that will allow ordinary people to achieve their dreams,” concluded Councillor Sunderland.<br /><br />For more information about Inspired Futures visit <a title="blocked::http://www.inspiredfutures.org.uk/" href="http://www.inspiredfutures.org.uk/">www.inspiredfutures.org.uk</a> or call 01274 666283Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-82118837932488924872008-11-14T13:15:00.001-08:002008-11-14T13:19:55.189-08:00Spirit of enterprise wins Tynedale national awardBy HELEN COMPSON<br /><br />13 November 2008<br /><br />The success of the <strong>Tynedale Enterprise Facilitation® Project </strong>was acknowledged when it was named one of the runners-up in the national finals of the Enterprising Britain Awards.<br /><br />The project’s chairman, <strong>Gill Burgess</strong>, was presented with a trophy by businessman Peter Jones, of BBC2 The Dragon’s Den fame, during the ceremony at 11 Downing Street.<br /><br />One NorthEast’s head of business, enterprise and skills, Tim Pain, said: “We’re extremely proud of Tynedale – the district has done a great job of showcasing North-East England’s growing enterprising culture. “I have no doubt that communities elsewhere can learn a great deal from its success.”<br /><br />Tynedale Enterprise Project has helped to either establish or grow around 80 independent businesses since its inception just 18 months ago.<br /><br />Read more... <a href="http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/news_at_a_glance/1.269408">http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/news_at_a_glance/1.269408</a>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-55619381655973484602008-10-15T13:57:00.000-07:002008-10-15T14:01:28.859-07:00Mining and Community Development: From Rhetoric to Practiceauthor: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli<br /><br />“Conventionally, mining companies have wanted to take immediate measures to alleviate poverty they observed in the neighborhood of their mining projects. Typically this has been by building schools, clinics, or hospitals and by sponsoring external health and education service providers to create new programs.<br /><br />Often these efforts, although appreciated as generous gifts to local communities, have not lasted beyond the life of the mine, and sometimes not even beyond the tenure of the particular company staff that instigated the projects. The reasons for this are because the projects:<br /><br />• Were chosen by the mining company people and/or the local elites<br />• Were built or run by outsiders, with little management involvement from local community members<br />• Were only accessible by the more affluent members of the community and not by the poorer members<br />• Required technology or knowledge not locally available to maintain them<br />• Or because the capacity of local people to manage the programs was not built up to a sufficient level.<br /><br />The sum of these factors is that, with the best of intentions, the projects were imposed upon local communities and they therefore did not feel any particular ownership of them nor did they have the needed capabilities to sustain them, resulting in a progressive decline once external support was withdrawn.<br /><br />Further, if local communities and government agencies become accustomed to mining companies taking charge of the provision of infrastructure and services, an unhealthy dependency relationship can evolve, which works against sustainability.”1<br />What Not to Do<br />I was about to start this paper with a critique of conventional community development programs when I came across the Community Development Toolkit published by the International Council on Mining and Metals in 2005. (The ICMM was set up in 2001 to represent many of the leading mining and metal companies of the world.) <br />The critique of “knee-jerk” infrastructure development in the Toolkit is spot on.<br /><br />For a number of reasons building infrastructures is the easiest thing for mining companies to do. Unfortunately, as recognized by the ICMM, the approach is not sustainable.<br /><br />I had the opportunity to visit a mining community in the Amazon that had been the recipient, for 45 years, of what I would describe as the paternalistic attention of an international mining company. The mine had built the school, sealed the roads, built for the community of 6000 people the best regional hospital in the State and provided electricity for the town.<br /><br />When I visited the community the mine had been closed for nine year and…nothing worked anymore!<br /><br />The power plant had shut down, the roads were reduced to obstacle courses of mud and potholes, the school barely survived and the hospital had shut down. When we asked the local council members what had happened, they told us that they had no resources to keep those infrastructures open. “We are poor,” they said. “Don’t give us infrastructures that we cannot maintain.”<br /><br />In Valdez, Alaska, we were told a similar story. The City, mostly with money from companies associated with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, built a multi-million convention center. The 20,000 square foot facility is now an albatross around the neck of the community of 4300 people that has little use for it. It costs the City $200,000 USD a year just to keep it heated!<br /><br />I am sure that all those associated with mining would be capable of sharing with me many more stories on the subject …<br /><br />Let’s simply say that I found the ICMM’s observations on the topic of infrastructure development both accurate and welcomed. <br /><br />What to Do<br /><br />Accurate and welcomed were also the recommendations of the ICMM in regards to the opportunities for mining companies in community development i.e. the “what to do”. <br />After discussing the obvious benefit of offering training and apprenticeships in trade areas to build the skill level of the local population, the Community Development Toolkit goes on to say the following:<br /><br />“The challenge, however, is to not only build the skills but also facilitate the growth of other activities in parallel to mining.…<br />Mining companies can localize some of their product and service procurement policies to help build local supply capabilities.<br />In addition to helping train local community members to provide goods and services, companies can also consider supporting micro credit schemes to help encourage small business.”<br /><br />The way I read the document is that mining companies should look at building the capacity of the communities to survive long after the mine has gone. To do so a parallel economy has to emerge that may be based, initially, on providing goods and services to the mine but that eventually would expand and diversify to provide the same to the community, the region and the State.<br /><br />The Toolkit even mentions, by name, an enterprise that did, precisely, that: <br /><br />“…The Lac La Ronge Indian Band initially developed trucking and catering skills with support from the local uranium mines in northern Canada. Over time, they expanded their business away from the mines and now have an annual turnover of $65 million CAD in 2005 supplying services in the surrounding region”. <br /><br />The Wrong Tools for the Job<br /><br />The Toolkit’s excellence, in both identifying “what not to do” and in suggesting the “what to do” was lost, in my view, when it started to suggest and enumerate the tools to achieve what it had so eloquently suggested.<br /><br />The “17 Tools” proposed are all “top down”.<br /><br />Some of them may be useful in identifying what areas of trade and apprenticeship can be offered to residents but, in our experience, they are useless in fostering entrepreneurship. To “facilitate the growth of other activities in parallel to mining” necessitates “facilitation tools” and facilitation tools have to be, by definition bottom-up and responsive.<br /><br />The ICMM Community Development Toolkit comprises:<br />• Four Assessment Tools<br />• Five Planning Tools<br />• Three Relationship Tools<br />• Two Program Management Tools and<br />• Three Monitoring and Evaluating Tools <br /><br />All of the above tools are “driven” from the mining company and are perfectly suited to achieve its objectives.<br /><br />Working with entrepreneurs, on the contrary, requires an environment that allows local people to come and tell us what they want to do, when they want to do it and how!<br /><br />Working with entrepreneurs in a community requires the creation of a “convivial” social infrastructure that allows for free, confidential, caring, competent and compassionate service to them. Unless such social infrastructure is in place would-be entrepreneurs will shy away from working with us or, even worst, they will come to seek our help for the wrong reasons.<br /><br />Working with Entrepreneurs<br /><br />Working with entrepreneurs over the past quarter century we have learned the following:<br /><br />Assessing how many would-be entrepreneurs may reside in a community by doing community surveys or asking around, as suggested in the Toolkit, does not work. Entrepreneurs do not reveal, in public, their ideas for making money because they fear competition and/or ridicule.<br /><br />Planning for entrepreneurs to appear to take care of the provision of certain goods or services doesn’t work either. In the words of the foremost scholar of entrepreneurship, Peter Drucker, “planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy.” Why? Because by definition entrepreneurship is a creative process that starts small, is decentralized, ad hoc, tentative and close to the action. Entrepreneurs see opportunities that nobody else see…by the time the opportunity has been “discovered” by the planners it isn’t an opportunity anymore! <br /><br />Managing entrepreneurs is futile. If we truly wish to foster an economy that can survive the closure of the mine then we have to have entrepreneurs capable of managing their own enterprises. Managing anything, on our part, will create dependency and achieve the opposite of our aim.<br /> <br />Monitoring is probably the least intrusive of the above tools. But monitoring is not going to create enterprises that will survive long after the mine has closed!<br /><br />Facilitating Entrepreneurship<br /><br />The change that is required to go from “planning for infrastructure development” to “facilitating local entrepreneurship” is huge. It is like going from open cut low grade coal mining to prospecting for gold nuggets! Not only the tools are different…everything is different, including the attitude and expectations of the people involved.<br /><br />We, at the Sirolli Institute, know how to prospect for gold. We know how to find one nugget at the time and have developed a methodology that actually gets the nuggets to come to us!<br /><br />In 1985 we implemented the first Enterprise Facilitation® project in Esperance, Western Australia. Since them we have been refining the process and have been developing tools for sustainable community development that are ideally suited for capturing the passion, energy and imagination of local would be entrepreneurs.<br /><br />Fundamental to our work are the following principles:<br /><br />• We never initiate contacts with local entrepreneurs<br /><br />• We never motivate local people to do anything<br /><br /><br />If invited to work in a mining community we engage firstly with the mining company management and train a small team in the principles and practices of Enterprise Facilitation.<br /><br />We then assist that team (called the Project Management Team) to recruit an Enterprise Facilitator. The Enterprise Facilitator is preferably a native of the country and is both culturally and linguistically suited to operate in the community.<br /><br />The Enterprise Facilitator, whose selection is based on certain personality characteristics and life experiences, is then trained by us to respond to local would-be entrepreneurs and to facilitate the transformation of their ideas into sustainable enterprises. <br /><br />As mentioned above, in our methodology the Enterprise Facilitators are taught not to approach local entrepreneurs to offer help nor to motivate local people to start businesses. We instead build a community team to introduce the Enterprise Facilitator, informally, to friends and family members. <br /><br />These community “helpers” are also trained by us to assist the Enterprise Facilitator with local intelligence and know-how and, taken together, the Management Team, the Enterprise Facilitator and the local Resource Team constitute the “convivial” social infrastructure that we mentioned earlier.<br /><br />In our view, building the capacity of the community to help itself is the precondition for sustainable development. A community that learns how to help its own people to transform their ideas into viable enterprises is also a community that can benefit from better infrastructures because, in the long term, it will have the resources to maintain them.<br /><br />Conclusions<br /><br />While working with mining companies we have noticed that the language and the thinking behind community development have made dramatic changes. It is as if the rhetoric is finally in place. It is the tools that have to catch up!<br /><br />Reviewing the bibliography of the ICMM Community Development Toolkit I couldn’t fail to notice that some of the tools had been borrowed from international development agencies and institutions that I call, affectionately, the “agents of virtue”! <br /><br />Affectionately because I have known them since the early ‘70’s, when I started my work in Africa, and they are like those dear but obnoxious relatives that keep showing up at family gatherings retelling those same old, ridiculous stories. <br /><br />I saw “assessment, planning, managing and monitoring” done in Africa over the past forty years and it didn’t work.<br /><br />In fact after forty years of international aid and $1 trillion dollars donated to the African continent, Africa is poorer now than forty years ago. Not only that, but the gap between African countries and the rest of the world has actually widened during the period.<br /><br />The rhetoric in international development circles is becoming even more refined and the names involved even more impressive but what has been done is more of the same. More money to build hospitals, schools, water treatment and roads for communities that cannot maintain them. <br /><br />Yet, as described in Paul Theroux’s recent book Dark Star Safari2 the agents of virtue are busier in Africa than ever before and, if possible, they are even more righteous. They speed by, whites in their white 4x4s, as angels of the Lord on urgent missions of mercy…it is understandable that they never stop to give a lift to anybody; they are too busy saving Africa! <br /><br />1 Community Development Tool Kit: International Council on Mining and Minerals (ICMM), The World Bank Group, Energy Sector management Assistance Programme (ESMAP), 2005.<br /><br />2 Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, 2003.Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-85173830736178697462008-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:002008-04-24T10:18:39.896-07:00Sirolli Institute Grassroots Development Process a Cure for Ailing Economy as New Business Sustainability Averages 95%<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ULdJA-gltec/SBDA2sTYMGI/AAAAAAAAAAM/MsqsdW3jm80/s1600-h/NancyLarsen.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ULdJA-gltec/SBDA2sTYMGI/AAAAAAAAAAM/MsqsdW3jm80/s320/NancyLarsen.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192862416196087906" /></a><br /><strong>Enterprise Facilitation from Sirolli Provides Hope, Sustainable Jobs to Foundering Economy Through Community Mentoring Process That Is Free to Entrepreneurs</strong><br /><br /><br />MARION, SD -- (April 7, 2008) -- Sirolli Institute, a leader in the field of sustainable community and economic development announced the upcoming anniversary of the Southeast Enterprise Facilitation Project (SEFP), based in Marion South Dakota will take place April 16, 2008. With projects scattered throughout the U.S., the sustainability of new businesses started through the trademarked Enterprise Facilitation process far exceeds the national average, with independently assessed projects in rural Kansas experiencing a 95% sustainability rate, and SEFP having new businesses succeed at an average 79.5% after the first four years. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national average for businesses still in operation after the first four years is only 44 percent. <br />“We advocate for a civic economy, a model of development that supports the creation of wealth from within a community by nurturing the intelligence and resourcefulness of its people, and champion the development of community through the passionate mentoring of local talent,” stated Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, Founder of the Sirolli Institute. “By promoting quality local enterprises that diversify the economic base and create jobs while respecting the environment and infusing the community with local vigor and ideas, communities are able to successfully grow themselves from the bottom up. The fact that people from all walks of life in the community are utilized to support the process, and that the service is free to anyone with an idea for a business helps ensure long-term viability and creates a true sense of community, is something that is often lacking in today’s society.” <br />With Enterprise Facilitation projects based throughout the U.S. in states like New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota, Oregon and California, the biggest impact can be seen particularly in disenfranchised rural areas, who have experienced renewed economic growth and vitality. The process supports home businesses, mixed use areas, liveable cities and the emergence of civic society to achieve indigenous growth. People often overlook that creating one job can have such an exponential impact. For example, in one of the project communities 450 people are supported by 104 new, expanded or retained jobs.<br />“The process is effective because it allows each entrepreneur to focus on his or her strengths, and connects them with others in the community who can help them tackle the areas of starting a business that can be overwhelming, such as developing a business plan and securing financing,” offered Nancy Larsen, Enterprise Facilitator for the SEFP. “While there is a financial investment made by the community to manage the process, there is never a cost to prospective entrepreneurs who receive services, and the process is complimentary to conventional development resources, which are scarce or inaccessible in rural areas. The fact that the sustainability rate for new businesses in a project area such as ours, are at 79.5%, or 35% above the national average after four years, and that 81% of the jobs created still exist is nothing short of amazing. The local investment really brings the community together as a team and is a catalyst for developing relationships and a willingness to work together that might otherwise never have occurred.”<br />With the entire population served in Turner and Hutchinson Counties totaling less than a mere 17,000 people, and the largest community in the area fewer than 1,700 individuals the SEFP statistics are remarkable. From June 1997 through February 2008 the project numbers include:<br />• 911 Inquires<br />• 496 Clients Enrolled<br />• 58 New Businesses<br />• 308 Jobs<br />• 21 Expanded Businesses<br />• 25 Retained Businesses <br />“A key component in the value provided by SEFP lies in the long-term success of those clients that were assisted and decided to follow their dreams. Statistically, our clients have remained in business longer than a typical new business venture, partly due to the research and educational processes involved,” offered John McDonald, SEFP Board Treasurer and original board member. “In addition, the assistance provided by SEFP may help a client realize that their dream is not feasible and we can help them avoid an inevitable failure. There is value in the research and educational processes our clients follow, that makes it a good investment and a win-win situation for everyone involved.” <br />“The ‘economy,’ to us at the Sirolli Institute, is nothing less than millions of people doing beautifully what they love doing. The better they are at it, the better the economy! The difference between poverty and riches is the presence, or not, of civic society, i.e. the combination of social conditions and reciprocity which allow creativity and intelligence to blossom or to wither and die,” explained Dr. Sirolli.<br />“Our rural communities are fighting and scratching to survive, and while the jobs and economic stimulus provided by SEFP is important, a more important aspect is the people, offered Dr. John Chicoine, one of the original members of the SEFP Board. “The people who are the entrepreneurs that use the resources of SEFP and the Board members who dedicate their time and expertise to serving those people who are starting a business or expanding a business are the real value. The passion involved in this organization with the board and the entrepreneurs is extraordinary, and that passion is what fuels the entrepreneurial spirit.” Dr. Chicoine went on to say, “Dr. Ernesto Sirolli shared his passion with us eleven years ago, and that passion that has enriched and changed lives cannot have a value put on it, it is priceless. He gave us the tools to follow the dream and begin the journey, and what we have created exceeded our expectations after the first five months. The rest is history.” <br /><strong>About Sirolli Institute</strong><br />Founded in 1996, the Sirolli Institute is a global, not-for-profit organization of experienced professionals with the mission of introducing Enterprise Facilitation to communities seeking to grow their economies from within.<br />When invited, we help you to establish a community-based organization that works in concert with existing economic development efforts to assist entrepreneurs. This organization serves as a catalyst for renewed community pride and civic spirit. <br />Since 1985, thousands of new and expanding businesses resulting in thousands of new jobs have been started with the help of Enterprise Facilitators in dozens of communities in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK and Canada.<br />For more information, please visit www.sirolli.com or visit SEFP online at www.sefp.com<br /># # #Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-52666356565647343002008-03-05T10:51:00.000-08:002008-03-05T11:04:03.166-08:00Sirolli Visit sows seeds of Grass-Roots Dreams<span style="color:#333333;">Glen Winney is a man with a mission. He has invested in property development on the Fraser Coast and he is prepared to invest in the economic health of the region.<br /><br />That thinking was behind the decision of Glen and his brother Alan to commit their Seashift Developments company to sponsoring the visit to Hervy Bay last week of Dr. Ernesto Sirolli.<br /><br />To read more: </span><a href="http://www.sirolli.com/resources.cfm?cat=2"><span style="color:#333333;">http://www.sirolli.com/resources.cfm?cat=2</span></a>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-36319163881211874882008-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:002008-02-27T09:51:30.468-08:00Sirolli Institute- Fraser Coast Chronicle<strong>Sirolli - breath of fresh air for council</strong><br /><br />A powerful message about a simple catalyst for change will be delivered to the Fraser Coast on Friday.<br /><br />It comes just weeks before the new Fraser Coast Regional Council elections and shines a strong light on a path down which the new council could walk.<br /><br />The Dr. Ernesto way of invigorating local economies by tapping into entrepreneurs at grass roots level has given a vibrant new lease of life to hundreds of towns in a dozen or so countries.<br /><br />His inspiring message is both simple and complex.<br /><br />The simple part is to help a town (or in our case a region) appoint a facilitator to draw the threads of funding, markets, transport and expert advice to get a business venture off the ground.<br /><br />More complex is the way the facilitator is trained to draw out the entrepreneurs. they have interesting riding instructions; they are not allowed to initiate anything nor are they allowed to motivate anyone.<br /><br />If the passion comes fro the person with the dream, the facilitator helps turn it into reality.<br /><br />The Sirolli initiative is a breath of fresh air in the midst of our current council election. After the messy smear campaigns and anonymous venom on the Internet, we have genuine interest from good people who sincerely want to give our united region a quick leg-up.<br /><br />Nancy Bates-Editor<br />article posted in Fraser Chronicle on February 22, 2008<br /><br />for more information:<br /><a href="http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/">http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/</a>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-81493297903317408312007-12-07T07:42:00.000-08:002007-12-07T07:50:22.513-08:00The Sirolli Institute in Leeds<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvx2lYfOLmznUpCltt3AShYTOUfmKg0XV0W3a8YvKYNeocK0Iqa0heUnki9xDG71MRn-YViJVV4lugaBEsdOhAm_06axi1tFeGgWlWUWm2566qVJN5ZCnTjZSaBa7kUExXEmtX5Q6uFeo/s1600-h/Sirolli+web.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvx2lYfOLmznUpCltt3AShYTOUfmKg0XV0W3a8YvKYNeocK0Iqa0heUnki9xDG71MRn-YViJVV4lugaBEsdOhAm_06axi1tFeGgWlWUWm2566qVJN5ZCnTjZSaBa7kUExXEmtX5Q6uFeo/s320/Sirolli+web.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5141257108440157458" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><strong>L-R Mike Chitty, Yvonne Fizer, Anne Sherriff (Re'new) and Ernesto Sirolli</strong></span><br /></div><br />Ernesto Sirolli and Yvonne Fizer visited Leeds this week to bring the message of Enterprise Facilitation to the City. As invited guests of Re'new Ernesto and Yvonne spoke for a couple of hours on the importance of responsiveness in economic development as a compliment to the more traditional infrastructure led and strategic approaches to economic and social development.<br /><br />It is hoped that the interest shown in the message might lead to a project in the City.<br /><br />Rob Greenland, one of the participants at the meeting, has already blogged on the event. You can read his thoughts <a href="http://thesocialbusiness.typepad.com/the_social_business/2007/12/sirolli-and-res.html">here</a>.<br /><br />If you attended the event or have a view on the appropriateness of Enterprise Facilitation in Leeds then please do leave us a comment.Sirolli Institutehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14571148924452405304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-873311425359465561.post-84795041838547802052007-11-23T08:33:00.000-08:002007-11-23T08:38:25.699-08:00African aid: Fairport's Kamina Friends<strong>After visit, Kamina Friends decide to help war-torn village thrive:</strong><br /><br />(November 18, 2007) — When the Rev. Ann Kemper entered the African village of Kamina in 2003, she said it was a spiritual awakening.Villagers were trying to recover from a war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that had left the area impoverished and without a sound economic system.<br />"It was tremendously eye-opening to all of us," said Kemper, of Covenant United Methodist Church, 1124 Culver Road. "We were the first group (of Americans) to have visited Kamina since the war ended."<br />Slowly, several small businesses have emerged which Kemper, of Fairport, and others traveling with her from the United States, witnessed upon returning to Kamina in 2005.<br />A bicycle repair shop was found operating under the shade of a tree. Soap, rice, ground corn and other items were available at a roadside kiosk. A women's sewing cooperative was formed. Problems with roads and other infrastructural issues persist, but commerce is present.<br />And Kemper, along with the seven other members of Kamina Friends, a Fairport-based nonprofit, have committed to be a financial and business training resource for the village.<br />Kamina Friends Kemper and Jeff Tyburski, with representatives from other groups, traveled to Kamina in September with a strategy to further bolster the economy. The group hopes to implement an Enterprise Facilitation program developed by the Sirolli Institute, a nonprofit specializing in growing sustainable markets here and abroad.<br />The model establishes a volunteer board of residents who then train a full-time facilitator to work directly with residents wanting to start businesses.<br />Kamina Friends would pay the village facilitator's salary for three years until the village could afford to pay it.The Sirolli model has been successful in more than 200 communities, said Tyburski, adding that its effectiveness stems from people taking responsibility for growing their economy from within.<br />"The philosophy is a very bottom-up, people-centered approach," he said. "We're hoping Kamina is just a pilot study" that will lead to assisting other countries in Africa and other regions.<br />None of this would have been possible in Kamina, said Kamina Friends members, without the leadership of Bishop Ntambo Nkulu Ntanda, a leader in the United Methodist Church in the Congo; his wife Mama Nshimba; and Kamina's residents. They said the 2006 democratic elections in the Congo further underscored the socio-political changes in the region.<br />Kamina Friends will hold a community event at 7 p.m. Nov. 29 at Fairport United Methodist Church, 31 W. Church St., Fairport, to educate and train those interested in helping with this project.Special guest Ernesto Sirolli will discuss the Sirolli Institute, and representatives from Kamina are expected to participate as well.<br />Talks have begun with USAID, the United Methodist Committee on Relief and other groups to secure more resources for Kamina, and address its health care and infrastructural needs. "These relationships are real," Tyburski said."There's no walking away from this."<a href="mailto:NLEE@DemocratandChronicle.com">NLEE@DemocratandChronicle.com</a>Dora Lovehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16948869983251809712noreply@blogger.com0