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Training for social businesses

Fig: Training for social businesses

In order to combat the poverty status and inequalities in our region, the Program for Research, Assistance and Teaching of Microenterprises was created as a Community Service program in 1999 at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC), Tijuana, Mexico, with the participation of students and social businesses. In this sense, through a constant process of updating, a program of research, assistance, and teaching was carried out to provide training services to microenterprises (social business type 2), through the collaboration of teachers and university students of the Faculty of Economy and International Relations of the UABC.

This program managed to generate a dynamic interaction among participants, which allowed developing three contributions of greater relevance: Teaching-learning in service for undergraduate students; Capacity development for entrepreneurs, accessible and at low cost; Action-research resources for teachers. The social businesses that participated in the training are located in areas considered of priority attention by the local and federal government agencies, due to the high level of lag and marginalization of the population, which lives in a condition of extreme and multidimensional poverty.

The training program was based on six application instruments: Diagnosis, Microenterprise strengthening manual, Finance study, Logbooks, Training deliverables and Assessment and Evaluation. The diagnosis is applied at the beginning of the assistance implementation through a codification of criteria and the graph of networks, as well as a historical review of the reasons for entrepreneurship. We identify the areas of business opportunity, which are analyzed in detail for training. The Microenterprise strengthening manual is intended to serve as a guide and support for the students who carry out assistance to the Microenterprise. Management, purchasing, sales, and finance topics are developed. The student along with the teacher carry out a personalized plan of attention to the microenterprise from the identified weak points in the diagnosis application, and the study of the microenterprise strengthening manual. The strengthening manual guarantees that the training provides a series of basic concepts that the employer must know and apply in order to strengthen the operation of their business.

Especially, for the financial study, some documents are used, which are a support instrument for the determination and analysis of the fixed costs, variable costs and Break-Even production points of each microenterprise. In this way, optimal scenarios are studied at production levels to obtain benefits from employers. Logbooks are also a support tool for microentrepreneurs to keep record of product and/or money inputs and outputs, classifying the types of expenses and income for the calculation of daily balances for administration and efficient allocation of resources.

In the business training deliverables, the products and improvements made to the social business regarding to the topics addressed by the training are complied. With the intention to synthesize, present, and deliver tangibly to the employer the work that students and teachers achieve for the development and solidification of the microenterprise.

The assessment and evaluation format has a dual function: on the one hand, to appreciate, in a descriptive way, the entrepreneur's progress in his microenterprise activities, by assessing both his entrance and graduation profile from microenterprise assistance, applying the same criteria at the beginning and at the end of the training activities. Secondly, an evaluation of the efficiency of the assistance project is also carried out.

Since 1999, the program provided support to 11,500 microenterprises in urban and rural areas across the state. Especially, in 2017, a total of 118 social businesses (67 undertaken by women) were attended through 48 students of 8^th and 9^th semester, who had a series of trainings for the use of all instruments and mechanisms applied in the project’s operation. Social businesses are located in peripheral areas of Tijuana, where a high percentage of the population living in poverty is located. In the state of Baja California 22.5% of the inhabitants are in a situation of poverty. About 40 thousand people are in extreme poverty.

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Training for social businesses

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