Entrepreneurship is Natural

Katy Moonan, a Massachusetts-based social entrepreneur and adult educator, is leading the Institute for Training and Development’s input in the Rural Economic Dynamics for Prosperity (DERP) program to support Quiché and Mam indigenous communities in the western highlands of Guatemala.

Moonan’s first workshop with women agricultural producers, “Entrepreneurship is Natural: Steps to Master the Startup Process and Develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset (Emprender es natural: Pasos para dominar el proceso de emprendimiento y desarrollar una mentalidad emprendedora)” took place on March 13 in Quetzaltenango at the training center of the Asociación de Desarrollo Agrícola y Empresarial.

In the “Entrepreneurship is Natural” session, the participants compared mango resell businesses, one targeting locals as customers, the other for tourist customers.  In teams of four, participants applied a business model canvas tool for a third example customer, people battling cancer, and then presented their business model to the whole group.  As the session closed, two business model canvas sets emerged, and their respective contribution margin and break-even analysis were compared– all drawn from a role-play activity on the mango resell businesses.

Through agribusiness skill development and the development of entrepreneurial mindsets, the DERP trainings foster economic development and help reduce the productivity gap in agri-food sectors of the rural uplands around Quetzaltenango and Totonicapán, Guatemala, particularly focusing on indigenous women producers and their advocacy organizations.  Such capacity building establishes the conditions for human development and community-based value chain enhancement for small producers, as materialized in the March 13 training on entrepreneurship.