Box 2-1. Working at the grass roots

The poor, and especially women, depend to an ever increasing extent on the informal sector and microenterprises as a source of jobs and income. Yet the constraints they face are tremendous: illiteracy and lack of basic education; little or no access to information, credit, markets, and other business support; inadequate management skills; as well as hostile legal, policy, and institutional environments.

One program helping to overcome these obstacles, EDI's program of grassroots management training (GMT), is providing very poor, often illiterate women in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and North Africa with management skills relevant to their needs. Through EDI's program, several hundred trainers and enterprise support teams working with NGOs, local training institutes, and government extension workers have been taught to deliver participatory management training. In fiscal 1997, GMT was institutionalized and mainstreamed with awareness-raising seminars held in Morocco and Tunisia; seminars held in Burkina Faso for GMT trainers from West African countries and in Morocco for those from the Maghreb; training manuals were prepared and distributed; and strategic workshops were held.