Supporting Small Enterprises: Generating Jobs Through Processing Local Resources

The Innovation in Enterprise Development and Job Creation Project (InElam) project builds on the long-standing success of the Elam project, renowned for its inclusive market systems development approach. The current focus of the project is in Nepal's Madhesh and Karnali Provinces, two regions with the lowest human development index in the country. At its core, the project aims to reshape the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly targeting the pervasive issue of unemployment in Nepal.

The InElam Project holds immense significance in the context of Nepal's pressing unemployment challenges, particularly among the youth who, facing a lack of opportunities, often resort to migration in search of hope and prospects. In a landscape where systemic constraints hinder the growth of micro and small enterprises, InElam emerges as a beacon of hope for individuals, particularly those from disadvantaged communities and with limited resources aspiring to kickstart their entrepreneurial journey. The project offers comprehensive support to entrepreneurs, encompassing localized business services, strategic market linkages, improved financial access, networking opportunities, and the infusion of technical expertise. Leveraging cost-effective local technologies, the project pioneers innovative approaches to product development and enterprise promotion, aiming to minimize material imports, generate employment, and also contribute to environmental betterment.

Banana paper and essential oils

Over the past few decades, Nepal has become a reservoir of cheap labor for many countries – with all the opportunities and drawbacks that entails for Nepalese society. A project to promote technological innovation and micro-enterprise is helping to establish micro-entrepreneurship in Nepal, and showing that investing in a little business is a sensible use of the money sent home by family members working abroad.

Of the well over 400,000 young people entering Nepal’s job market every year, 100,000 leave the country to look for work in Malaysia or the Gulf States, where they are all too often exploited on construction sites and in private households. Their remittances, however, go to make up more than 30% of Nepal’s gross national product (GNP). In fact, labor migration has raised hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty. They build themselves a house, purchase consumer durable goods or send their children to private schools. The effects of these remittances on the domestic job market, however, are minimal.

This Helvetas project helps socially disadvantaged young people become micro-entrepreneurs themselves: they now distill peppermint, eucalyptus or lemongrass into essential oils, or turn banana tree trunks into paper and yarn, charcoal dust into burnable pellets. They make unfired mudbricks more durable by adding cement.

They learn not only how to make new products, but also the basics of entrepreneurship: how to draw up a business plan, keep the books, reinvest profits. The goal is for families to invest some of the remitted money in micro-enterprises. That way, the earnings from labor migration help to improve the domestic labor market, for these newly created micro-enterprises are also creating new jobs at home.