Young rural entrepreneurs – promoting an entrepreneurial culture – Argentina
Public intervention aimed at preventing the migration process and deteriorating quality of rural life, due to lack of opportunities to find livelihoods in traditional activities in the agricultural sector.
The project focused on the installation of entrepreneurial skills among rural young people, by means of education, training and technical assistance.
- Direct project beneficiaries were rural young people between 15 and 29 years of age.
- Also recipients were young people of urban areas who, due to rural migration, are forced to live in urban areas with a dynamic and rural dependency.
The intervention strategy was based on supporting the constitution of new productive entrepreneurships, what contributed to solve the shortage or low quality jobs, focusing on the promotion of entrepreneurial skills among rural youth.
Emphasis was on the development of intensive and/or new productions (aimed, in principle, at small scale niches) which would be easily accessible to new producers, with no major barriers to entry, without large investments, and that have working components and technological knowledge, for which young people have important skills and potential.
Technical assistance, information, links to networks, training and support for access to markets was provided, underpinning the fact that young people would be more motivated to address production problems.
Rural organizations were reinforced in order to develop promotion policies aimed at youth, strengthening those social ones already existing in rural areas, promoting synergies between public and private institutions.
The project aimed to reach directly 1000 young people, 2000 that would be trained and 4500 to be trained indirectly through sensitizing activities.
• Strengthening rural institutions to promote actions and provide support services to young entrepreneurs, through the Development Centers for Young Rural Entrepreneurs (CED).
• The project trained in promoting skills and formed a network of CED and entrepreneurs.
With a sample of 91 enterprises assisted by the project, 100% of interviewed young people were positive to the tasks performed.
The most valued aspects were the contributions in the development of the business plan, training costs, marketing and networking generation.
Almost a third of the answers expressed explicitly that the project enabled them to increase their income and improve marketing.
15 CED were constituted (5 more than expected), covering the 5 regions (Northeast, Northwest, Cuyo, Pampa and Patagonia)..
