Aside from achieving food security, sources of income and livelihood may also come in through establishing school-plus-home gardens. This was the highlight of the 7th session of the e-training titled, Trainers’ Training for Integrating the School-plus-Home Gardens cum Biodiversity Enhancement Enterprise (SHGBEE) in Agricultural Technology Parks (ATPs) and Mini-ATPs in Cambodia on 9 February 2022, via the Zoom platform. This learning event is a collaborative undertaking between the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) and the Center of Excellence on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Nutrition (CE SAIN), in partnership with the Kansas State University (KSU) and the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB).
Participants and organizers of Session 7.
Professor Bates M. Bathan, Assistant Professor 5 from the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, College of Economics and Management (CEM), UPLB talked about the concept of agripreneurship in relation to school gardens. Citing the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (2012), Prof. Bathan defined it as the entrepreneurship that relates to the marketing and production of various agricultural products, as well as agricultural inputs. In relation, agripreneur is an individual who starts, organizes, and manages a business venture focusing on the agricultural sector. Further, he also discussed the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs as organizers of people, strategies, and technologies; creative problem solvers; can establish strong partnership; and innovators. To make sense of these definitions and descriptions, he administered the assessment of personal entrepreneurial competencies (PECs) of the participants to evaluate the participants’ entrepreneurial capabilities in accordance with their attitude or personal beliefs.
The participants were tasked to accomplish the Business Model Canvas (BMC) during the workshop to help them understand their business model in a straightforward and structured way. It is mainly for describing, visualizing, assessing, and changing business models. It also describes the rationale of how a business creates, delivers, and captures value. The participants Various type of services and commodity under the customer segments of the BMC template whom the respective schools create value appear during the presentation. These are GAP vegetables, agricultural inputs, local customers, students and teachers, and farmers support in the form of trainings. were able to present their BMC at the main session. These were all synthesized by Prof. Bathan by providing feedback on how to enhance the BMC of the participants.
Prof. Bathan explaining how to fill out the Business Model Canvas (BMC) template.
At the end of the session, the organizers facilitated a post-session evaluation to gauge the knowledge and confidence gained by the participants in sharing and teaching the lessons they have learned from the lecture. Reflection and synthesis on encouraging the participants and their students to be an agripreneur was the wrap up of the session.
The SHGBEE Cambodia e-training has 10 sessions and will continue to run until 9 March 2022.