Start and Improve Your Business Programme
It supports the sustainable development goals by promoting:
- Business development policies that support decent job creation, entrepreneurship and encourage the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises
- Productive employment and decent work for all, including the youth and persons with disabilities
What's New
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A guide for business plan competitions
Getting entrepreneuship contests right
May 2019
Business Plan Competitions have been gaining momentum and are increasingly used as a tool to encourage entrepreneurs to explore new business ideas, start up their own company or bring to scale a business. This document was developed to provide guidance to practitioners and partner organizations on how to run a business plan and similar competitions in a simple and straightforward manner. In doing so, the guide draws on experiences from Egypt, Kenya, South Africa and Yemen as well as on external literature.
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Business competition
SIMUKA-PHAKAMA
Is your business ready to leap and go green?The Simuka-Phakama Green enterPRIZE Innovation Challenge aims to identify green, growth oriented enterprises through annual competitions and provide the winners with technical support to develop and create more and greener jobs, while improving existing ones. Targeted SMEs will expand their green products and services through a business development programme supported by strategic alliances with business development service (BDS) providers and financial institutions.
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Global highlights
SIYB update 2018
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Brief
What Works In a Market-Oriented Strategy for SME Development - Evidence From Myanmar
While BDS market facilitation has been regarded as priority in development programmes, seldom has it been operationalized into tangible activities and results. The incentives for projects to directly deliver and pay for services offered to beneficiaries in order to meet the targets are strong. This brief explains how the BDS market facilitation approach was implemented for two projects in Myanmar and presents the results and key achievements.
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Brief
The Next 15 Million: Entrepreneurship Training At Scale – New Data On The Global Outreach Of ILO’s Entrepreneurship Training
A global tracer study on the ILO’s entrepreneurship training program Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) showing that global outreach more than doubled in the past five years. With 15 million participants SIYB is the most popular entrepreneurship training program.
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Publication
Does the combination of vocational and business management training produce extra benefits?
There is growing evidence that the combination of services work better than a single service delivered in isolation; exploring cases in this area and finding the best way of managing combinations is thus of high relevance for the design of job-creation initiatives.
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Publication
Green Business Booklet
Going green is not only good for the environment, but makes business sense too, as the greening of enterprises results in improved access to markets, higher productivity and cost savings. The Green Business Booklet is part of the Green Jobs packages and the Start and Improve Your Business series of products and helps aspiring entrepreneurs to come up with a green business idea and existing entrepreneurs to green their businesses.
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Evidence
What works in Entrepreneurship
This new website summarizes the results of recent studies on what works in youth employment, including interesting findings on the impact of entrepreneurship training programmes.
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Event
2016 Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition
The winners of the Competition in the categories Best Ideas 2016 and Best Projects 2016 were announced in the Entrepreneurship Summit in Berlin in October 2016. Enter to this section to see the winners of the competition.
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Article
Business Practices in Small Firms in Developing Countries
This independent study uses the contents of ILO's Improve Your Business (IYB) training curriculum to measure whether improved business practices have an impact on enterprise performance in small enterprises.
Key Resources
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News
2017 SIYB Update
The 2017 SIYB Update includes news on 2016-2017 SIYB activities in 33 countries around the globe, details on the newly updated SIYB website in English, French and Spanish with new marketing material, and the presentation of new SIYB material adaptations and the SIYB Global tracer study.
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THE NEXT 15 MILLION
SIYB Global Tracer Study 2011-15This study traces the outreach of the "Start and Improve Your Business" (SIYB) programme and some other key achievements, including estimates of its impact. The report has been prepared for practitioners in enterprise development who want to use SIYB, as well as any other organization or individual engaged in entrepreneurship and management training.
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Brochure
Start and Improve Your Business Brochure
SIYB is one of the largest global business management training programmes. It helps small-scale entrepreneurs to start and grow their business, as a strategy to create more and better employment for women and men.
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Publication
SIYB Implementation Guide
The SIYB Implementation Guide is intended as a practical tool to support the introduction and roll out of SIYB activities at country level. It provides step-by-step guidance for the successful implementation of SIYB.
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Publication
Synergies at Work: Does the combination of business training and access to finance produce extra benefits?
This paper presents three cases in which SIYB business management training was offered as an added service to clients of microfinance institutions. Understanding the costs and benefits of providing such a combination of services, both for the institution and for clients, will help development practitioners determine whether to invest in such an intervention.
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News
SIYB Update - August 2016
The August 2016 SIYB Update includes 6 pages of highlights on news on 2015-2016 SIYB activities in 31 countries in all regions (14 in Africa, 7 in Latin America and 10 in Asia); details on the SIYB and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) paper; details on the Youth Employment Report and an abstract of what will be included in the Global Tracer Study for 2016