Micro-entrepreneurship is a very small undertaking, which by its nature and scope is capable of generating only the job of whoever creates it and probably of someone else in their family group. It seems unimportant for scholars to consider, but the reality is that many ventures of this type right now are feeding millions of people around the world and generating self-sustenance, progress and well-being.
Not all people have the knowledge, the drive, the will, the financial muscle or investment capacity, the desire, or the vision required to be great entrepreneurs, but every person, professional or not, who knows how to do a job with an acceptable level of quality, it has some elements in its favor to be considered as a potential entrepreneur. Obviously, the statistics say that many entrepreneurs fail within a few months of undertaking, because motivated by necessity and an adventurous spirit, they launch their entrepreneurship projects on the market, these being hardly an empirical project, lacking the minimum elements of the science of entrepreneurship.
I am absolutely sure that the economic and social history of our Latin American countries would be different if micro-entrepreneurship were considered a topic of national strategic interest, absolutely linked to all economic and social policies, to all development plans and to all educational plans..
I believe that it is impossible for a country to overcome poverty, linked to unemployment and incapacity for production and sustainability, indoctrinating young people from schools to train as extraordinary professionals who will occupy existing jobs created by others, but that in the vast majority of cases, they will not create a single new one.
Massive micro-entrepreneurship as a strategic policy of the States, is clearly the solution to unemployment and poverty, with its consequent direct and indirect impacts on the microeconomic, macroeconomic and socioeconomic indices.
As long as Latin American politicians continue to consider that the main strategy to fight poverty should be based on applying sterile methods such as creating public, clientele and unproductive jobs, giving away food, subsidizing public services, granting scholarships and generating other parasitic behaviors in the population, the Micro-enterprises will not be the priority, neither for the State nor for the population.
Only when social and political leaders understand the true power of micro-entrepreneurship used as an effective weapon to combat poverty, as a sociological tool to vaccinate future generations against poverty, as a political instrument to massively generate real livelihood opportunities, As a catalyst for equality and social peace, regionally we will be aimed at true development, which is closely linked to the well-being of the popular masses and collective improvements in their quality of life.
In Venezuela, we annually have approximately 500,000 new high school graduates. More than half will surely continue their university studies with many deficiencies and making an economic weight to their parents. Many must learn to work in order to pay for their studies. How would the social reality change one of these high school graduates, if instead of looking for a job and earning a minimum wage, they managed to carry out a micro-enterprise? What if it is not a single isolated case, but that micro-enterprises could be developed by 10% of new high school graduates? This would represent approximately 50,000 new micro-businesses per year, which is equivalent to at least 150,000 new jobs created!
This would be achieved by establishing entrepreneurship as a school subject, from primary to high school, with the logical levels of depth and complexity. In this way, a culture of micro entrepreneurship would be generated.
That is what we have been doing in «Entrepreneur Pigeon» and in ADNPobreza for 9 years, giving around 1,000 talks and conferences in more than 200 schools and lyceums in Venezuela.
They are thick figures, not negligible for any government that is really interested in creating jobs…
