Young Graduates Entrepreneurship Course

Entrepreneurial activities have become very important as they stimulate economic development and help in the creation of employment opportunities. Many governments including malaysia have recognised the contribution of entrepreneurial activities to the national economic growth and have started to provide various forms of assistance and facilities to boost entrepreneurship in their respective countries. 

Women entrepreneurs have also been recognised as an important contributor to the growth of the SMEs and indirectly to the nation’s economy. However, the number of women owned SMEs are low especially in the less developed and developing nations.

Despite having made huge progress academically, girls have not chosen entrepreneurship as their career path. Young female graduates are more likely to work in public administration, health, educational and services industries.

It was hoped that through this course, the women participants would gained a great deal of insights and exposure on the real scenarios of entrepreneurship and consider business and entrepreneurship as an alternative career path that would offer them greater job satisfaction as well as economic success.

The Course aimed to educate the participants through:

• A series of mini lectures and special talks by guest speakers who are industry practitioners and successful entrepreneurs.
• Group roundtable discussions.
• A “Bring Your Own Case” experiential workgroup.
• Industry engagements/study excursions to a few local businesses in Kota Kinabalu.

Objectives of the course

• Provide exposure/interaction and deliberate on the latest challenges and key issues faced by young women entrepreneurs to better market access in the country and beyond.
• Serve as a platform to establish networking between participating women entrepreneurs.
• Enhance the role and capacities of the participants to operate effectively and efficiently.
• Educate the participants how to comprehend changes in the national and global economies so as to enable them to identify and successfully pursue business opportunities.
• Gain business inspirations from the industry engagement visits.
• Learn successful business models and best practices from successful entrepreneurs (guest speakers) and replicating these business models in their home country.

The participation of young women entrepreneurs from the NAM countries at the Course would be an added advantage as transnational networking would:

• Help participants understand the business culture in other countries.
• Provides a powerful stimulant for contact and collaboration.
• Promotes multicultural interactions and awareness of cross-cultural perspective which would stimulate creativity and innovation in business, and
• Help facilitate cross-border and cross-industry partnerships amongst them.

This Workshop was designed for:

• Young women graduates who wish to be entrepreneurs.
• Young women entrepreneurs who have just started their business less than a year.
• Young women entrepreneurs who are in the business between 1 – 3 years.
• NGOs.
• Senior government officials from Ministries & government agencies.
• Masters & PhD students in Entrepreneurship.