Evaluation of the impacts of PRIDE/VITA [Programme Integre pour le Developpement de l'Entreprise/Volunteers in Technical Assistance, Inc.] (the Guinea rural enterprise development project)

The evaluation covers the period 1991-9/95 and focuses on PRIDE's micro-credit project and entrepreneur development workshop. In the micro-credit project, non-collateralized loans and business management training are provided to small producers who organize themselves into groups of five for the purpose of guaranteeing each other's loans. There has emerged a clear pattern of difference among those with multiple loans, those who have had one loan or only training, and non-clients of PRIDE. The recipients of multiple loans have increased the revenues received from their enterprise, as well as their individual and family income. This is so even though non-clients have as many long-term assets (e.g., houses, land, vehicles) as clients do, suggesting that the multiple loan recipients have begun to receive their higher incomes recently, in the last few years, consistent with receiving the loans from PRIDE. Additionally, multiple loan recipients have begun to enjoy certain fruits of their greater prosperity. They are now able to purchase better food than they could before, again setting them off from the non-clients. The entrepreneur development workshop, Atelier sur l'Esprit d'Entreprise, is a 2-week, for-fee program which provides 20-30 individuals per session with self-evaluation exercises, business management classes, and simulations and individual meetings with bankers. The program has been very successful, offering an appropriate set of lessons that were absorbed by the trainees and used directly in their enterprises. Two aspects were interrelated in this success: the high degree of motivation of those who take the workshop and the appropriate package of lessons and teaching techniques. The only question is whether the lessons and teaching materials were as adapted to women trainees as to men trainees. Women found the lessons harder to understand and the case materials less relevant. Overall, however, both men and women were pleased with the program, and reported that it had led to important changes in their work habits and in the success they now experience.