Composition of the Manual

The course material in this training manual is composed of six main sections. Each section is divided into sessions consisting of a trainer's guide and handouts. The same handouts form part of the Workbook for the course participants.

How to use the Session Guides

The following pages give fairly detailed guidelines for each session in the course; many trainers are not familiar with session guides of this sort, and it is important to be clear as to the following points regarding adaptation of the material, preparing yourself for each session and the actual conduct of the session.

Adapting the Material

Read through the complete set of session guides and decide what parts of it are appropriate for the particular group of women entrepreneurs whom you are to train; it is possible, although unlikely, that the complete course can be run as outlined in the guidelines without any modifications.

It is more likely that:

· only certain sessions or pans of sessions should be used
· modifications will have to be made to the sessions which will be used
· some quite new sessions will have to be included.

Go carefully through the material that you plan to use, and ensure that names, currency and other aspects are changed, particularly in the exercises, handouts and case studies. The currency used throughout the manual is Kwacha (K) because the manual was first field-tested in Zambia.

Think of locally familiar examples to illustrate the points made during the session, and make a note of them in the margin.

Remember that the best examples, exercises and case studies come from participants' own business experiences; be ready to replace the case studies and so on given in these guidelines with examples drawn from participants themselves.

Preparing for the Sessions

Do not fall into the trap of believing that you need less time for preparing because you have pre-prepared guidelines; the participative method which is the basis of each session requires you to be ready for any possible response to your questions; every participant has her own views, and in most sessions there are no right or wrong answers. Your task is to elicit and guide participants' contributions, and to help them to share their views in such a way that each participant evolves her own understanding of the particular topic, built on what you and her colleagues have to contribute.

Be sure to have the right number of copies of the properly modified case studies or exercise ready for distribution at the right time; if you wish, prepare flip chart sheets, overhead projector slides or other visuals in advance but be ready to modify these in the light of participants' contributions.

Conducting the Sessions

You should at the beginning of the session have a clear idea of the conclusions to which you wish to lead participants, but you must also be ready to follow a quite different line if this appears appropriate. At the end of the session, participants should feel that they themselves have produced whatever conclusions they have reached; you, as instructor, will have done your job well if your own contribution has been tactfully to steer the participants, while they feel that they are in fact in charge.

Ensure that every participant understands what is being said; some people learn without making many personal contributions, while others tend to dominate the session, without themselves learning anything. It is your task to moderate the proceedings, so that everyone gets an opportunity to contribute, and those who do not understand, and are too shy to admit it, are identified and assisted as needed.

When dividing the group into smaller sub-groups, be sure that everyone has a chance to learn and to contribute her views. In the "Enterprise Experience", when participants may be working in groups, it is particularly important to ensure that the record-keeping is not done by one member who already has the necessary skills, while the others learn nothing.

Some instructors believe that participative sessions such as these are far easier for them than traditional lectures, because most of the ideas are elicited from the participants rather than being stated by the instructor. They are wrong; sessions such as these require more rather than less preparation if they are to be effective, and the instructor must have the confidence to admit that she 'too' can and must learn, with the participants, rather than pretending that she knows everything and they must only learn from her.

Duration of the Sessions

Each session guide gives an estimated duration of the session, based on the authors' experience. When you prepare a session you should split it into its different steps and activities, estimate the time for each of these steps, allow enough time for questions, discussions, group work and report back.

At the end of this section you will find a proposal for a time schedule.

Counselling Sessions

In addition to the guides for class sessions, you will also find four Counselling Sessions; these are designed to allow participants to exchange ideas and learn from one-another in a more informal way than is possible when the whole group is together.

These sessions are very important, and you may find it desirable to include more of them, focussing on different topics where the participants want more individual attention. The whole group should be divided into sub-groups of no more than four women; each should have a counsellor, who is willing and able to commit the necessary time to the task.

If there are enough instructors or other staff who are in close touch with the course you may use them as counsellors; if not, you should ask members of the group who appear to be more confident in the particular topic to act as counsellors. If you do this, be sure that as many of the participants as possible have the opportunity to serve as counsellors, in order to avoid giving the impression that some participants are "better" than others.

You should use the results of the counselling sessions as input for the subsequent full class sessions, since they will give you a very good indication of what participants need to learn. It should also be possible to arrange individual meetings with participants who need individual instruction on particular topics, and the counselling sessions will show you when this is necessary.

How to use the Workbook

Each participant should get a file in which she can collect her own notes, timetable, handouts, drawings, questionnaires and other information. The participants should be advised to put all information together in such a way that they can use the workbook as a source of information in their businesses.

Most sessions are summarized on a one (or maximum two) page handout. The trainer should not distribute these handouts without having made sure that the information corresponds with that given during the actual session. Because the session guides are only guidelines and will certainly be adapted to the participants' and the trainers' needs and experiences, it is recommended that handouts are prepared after each session and the ones included in this manual be regarded as examples.

In addition to the "summary" handouts, many sessions have handouts in the form of case Studies, exercises or questionnaires which have been tested several times. If a trainer wishes or needs to change them, she/he should first test the new design with friends or relatives to make sure that others understand them, and that calculations are correct.

Proposed Time Schedule

It is proposed to divide a day into four sessions; for example:

1. session: 8.30 to 10.00	3. session: 14.00 to 15.30
2. session: 10.30 to 12.30	4. session: 16.00 to 17.30

Week	Day	Session	Content
1	1	1 + 2	· Opening of the course
		3	· Introduction to the course
		4	· Enterprise Experience: Generating the Idea and the people
	2	1	· Women and business
		2a	· Enterprise Experience: Report Back
		2b	· Enterprise Experience: Proposal Preparation
		3	· Entrepreneurial Characteristics
		4	· Entrepreneurial Role Model
	3		Technology Choice:
		1 + 2	· Characteristics of foods
		3 + 4	· Spoilage & Preservation
	4	1 + 2	· Hygiene
		3 + 4	· Facilities & Equipment
	5	1 + 2	· Effects of Processing on Food Quality
		3 + 4	· Nutrition & Diet
	6	1 - 4	· Food Processing for Income Generation Compared to Home Preservation
2	1	1 - 3	· Small Scale Processes for Income Generation
		4	· Summary of Technology Choice sessions
	2	1 + 2	· Enterprise Experience: Presentation of Proposals
		3	· Finding out about the Market
		4	· Counselling: Your Business and You
	3	1	· The Marketing Mix
		2 - 4	· Costing and Pricing
		Evening	· Counselling: Entrepreneurial Self-Rating
	4	1	· Personal Selling
		2	· Marketing Simulation Exercise
		3 + 4	· Product Promotion
	5	1 + 2	· Product Distribution
		3	· Enterprise Experience: Lessons learned
		4	· Counselling: Marketing your product
3	1	1 - 4	· Basic Business Records
	2	1 - 3	· Cash Flow
		4	· Counselling: Book-keeping and Your Business
	3	1	· The Profit and Loss Account
		2	· The Break-Even Point
		3 + 4	· The Balance Sheet
	4	1	Sources and Uses of Money
		2 - 4	Efficiency and the Envelope Game
	5	1 + 2	· Enterprise Experience: The Final Results
		3 + 4	· Introduction into Business Plan
	6	1 - 4	· Preparation for Field Study and Individual Counselling
Field Study			Field Study
4	1	1 + 2	· Field Study Follow-up
			Technology Skills
		3 + 4	· Overview of Product Selection
	2	1 - 4	· Raw Material Selection and Preparation
	3	1 - 4	· Processing
	4	1 + 2	· Processing
		3 + 4	· Packaging
	5	1 + 2	· Packaging
		3 + 4	· Production
	6	1 - 4	· Production
5	1	1 + 2	· Business Plan Preparation
		3 + 4	· Individual Preparation of Business Plans
	2	1 - 4	· Individual Preparation of Business Plans
	3	1 - 4	· Individual Preparation of Business Plans
	4	1 + 2	· Individual Preparation of Business Plans
		3 + 4	· Business Plan Presentation
	5	1 + 2	· Presentation of Business Plans to a Panel
		3 + 4	· Closing Ceremony