Summary, Part 1, Part II, Part III - Proceedings from the June conference include, summaries of presentations, PowerPoint presentations, and biographies of speakers.

Access to decent work acts as an antidote to social exclusion right across our global economy. SEED seeks to unlock the potential for creating more and better jobs in the small enterprise sector. Since this is where most women and men earn their living - in micro- and small enterprises, in self-employment, in the informal economy - this is where policies, regulations, business training, market development and organization building matter most.

The International Labour Conference validated this idea in 1998 by adopting Recommendation No. 189 on "Job Creation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises". This offers a vision of a vibrant, job-creating, poverty-fighting small enterprise sector. Now SEED is working with governments, social partners and communities, to craft new policy tools, invigorate entrepreneurship and management training, and involve small business in new markets. The Programme conducts research on what works where and why, so that employment can be boosted through small enterprise development.

SEED builds on the ILO's 35 years of experience in supporting small enterprise development. Its mission is to strengthen understanding of how development of this economic sector can better serve employment goals. Most importantly, this knowledge is being put to work through policy guidance, technical assistance and international advocacy. ILO concerns and values drive the work that SEED carries out in improving job quality in small enterprises, increasing economic opportunities for women, promoting association building of employers and workers in the sector, and upgrading the informal economy.

The main areas of work are:

 •   Promotion of an enabling business environment: balancing the need to reduce compliance and efficiency costs with the need to safeguard and, where appropriate, improve protection for workers, including their right to social protection
 •   Building representative associations
 •   Access to business development services
 •   Value chains and cluster upgrading
 •   Informal economy upgrading
 •   Promotion of an entrepreneurial culture
 •   Job quality in micro- and small enterprises
 •   Youth entrepreneurship
 •   Women's entrepreneurship

The purpose of this case study is to review one aspect of the Micro and Small Enterprises Training and Technology Project2 its Voucher Program. The voucher is a mechanism which operates to stimulate demand for business development services, including skills training, technology, and specialized management and marketing consultations. Analysis of the Kenyan context (section II) indicates that inadequate skills, technology, support services and infrastructure are important constraints on the growth and productivity of micro and small enterprises, and that the potential demand for such services is substantial (section III). Furthermore, the capablity to supply these services exists, if it can be reoriented from top-down and supply-led approaches toward stimulating demand for available services already available in the economy (section IV). The voucher mechanism has been developed in the Project as a means of catalyzing the development of a market for training and business development services by bringing together potential demand and potential supply (section V).

On the basis of a pilot program (442 vouchers) and implementation of its first phase (4,000 vouchers), the voucher program has already demonstrated interesting results in terms of catalyzing a broad range of mostly private sector supplied business development services. Future challenges are to ensure the sustainability of the nascent BDS market for micro and small enterprises (section VI) and to measure the impact of training and services on the beneficiary Jua Kali firms (section VII).