Joint Ventures for Peace: Women Creating Peace
Joint Ventures for Peace brings together Palestinian and Israeli women entrepreneurs and artists to work as equal partners and create a unique discourse on peace. This project, which seeks to break down some of the barriers between Israelis and Palestinians, and to create peace on the ground, was established in the spring of this year by the Shorouq Society for Women (www.shorouqsociety.org) and The Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development – NISPED (www.nisped.org.il). Our project has been made possible by the generous support of the Canadian government.
This innovative project takes a holistic approach to peace and social-economic development by coupling the development of inter-group dialogue, knowledge and group cohesiveness with the development and support of creative small and medium business development and initiatives.
Nearly 40 women, who come from diverse backgrounds, participate in this project. The Palestinian women, Muslims and Christians, have expertise in embroidery, ceramics, straw weaving, art, beauty and hairdressing, Christmas gifts, social work, and soap making. The Jewish-Israeli women have expertise in ceramics, clothes design, art, writing, silver and goldsmith jewelry, graphic art, straw weaving, writing, and creation of products from recycled paper.
From Economic Crisis to a Green New Deal
The UK economy remains in crisis. It is still in recession. Any recovery, when it comes, will be fragile. The capacity for a foreseeable disaster to become a nightmare depression still exists.
Two things could precipitate the crisis that creates depression. The first would be any serious attempt to cut government spending at this moment. If this were to happen the fall in demand would leave unemployment spiraling, government debt escalating and deflation a significant probability. When that combination occurs the chance of getting out of depression is limited.
The second crisis that could cause depression would be international failure to cooperate on tackling this issue. Attempts to restrict trade at this moment, to impose tariffs or to simply rely on the action of others to stimulate the economy could all create the inertia that tips the balance downwards.
Common selling mistakes small businesses make and how to avoid them
In such a tough financial climate, many small businesses are suffering from the sales blues. With customers curbing their spending, businesses are resorting to cheesy sales techniques to close the deal. Nothing could be more repulsive or deter a client more, and as a result they will take their business elsewhere. All it takes to revive that bottom line is some simple but effective communication.
Clearly, the primary objective is for your business to survive in tough times or if you’re innovative enough, actually capitalise on the current climate. No cash, no company – we get that. But knee jerk reactions or begging isn’t going to do you any favours when it comes to closing deals.
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You Can Make a Business Bloom
 Global Entrepreneurship Week is all about embracing innovation, imagination and creativity. It showcases enterprise, opening up new opportunities for young people across Hull, the UK and the world. Global Entrepreneurship Week embraces big issues like innovating out of the recession, low carbon technologies and sustainable growth. It puts Hull at the heart of global exchange, global trade and builds a culture of global ambition in Hull and the Humber in particular and the UK in general.
Financial support for Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009 has come from Hull City Council, Gateway Pathfinder, Hull Training, Yorkshire Forward, the Co-operative Group, Jenko Ltd, Force-7, GH Productions, Reckitt and Benckiser, University of Hull, Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce, Arco, St Stephen's Centre, BAE Systems, Business Link Yorkshire, KCOM, Hull College, Hull Kingston Rovers, Hull FC, Hull City AFC, Hull Trains, elected member from University and Bricknell Wards Community budgets; Hull Truck
Small and Green for a Greener Tomorrow
 Today’s economic process has three features (1) too many people in the job market (2) scarce and fast exhausting natural resources and (3) planet threatening pace at which development process is taking place. The spirit that leads one and all is “we’ll build the big” and that too “no matter where it takes”!
But challenge ahead for those at the helm of the policy matters is to take us to a growth trajectory with a focus on inclusive employment generating and green oriented development, as we cannot just ignore signals like rising sea water level, something that matters for all GCC states. Here comes the role of Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs). Of course small and green has its beauty!
World has now come to realize the importance SMEs. GCC states too are in the lead to promote SMEs in a big way. But we need to seriously introspect, how far our SMEs growing? How many of the startups have survived after 7, 5, or 3 years? How many of those startups grown up in the enterprise ladder from a startup to a large scale enterprise (LSE)? In UAE there are 230, 000 registered SMEs and 132,000 in Oman. These are good numbers but how many of them are really in the business, if not why? There are other GCC states also have similar large numbers.
SAP Business One would help SMEs make better informed decisions: Vinod Bansal
 Cochin, Kerala, India: CCS Technologies and SAP India jointly conducted a Seminar on Enterprise Resource Planning software - SAP Business One at Hotel Avenue Regent, Cochin, in the southern city of India on 5th November 2009.
SAP Business One is the industry leading ERP solution for the Small and Medium Enterprises with more than one lakh satisfied users world over. CCS Technologies, a leading IT Solution provider from Kerala is a SAP Channel Partner and has rights to sell, implement and support SAP Business One in India. CCS has been providing implementation and support services to companies in India and overseas for high end ERP product MySAP ERP for many years and so is uniquely qualified to provide the same services to SAP B1 also.
This paper looks at the concept of SMEs, their place in an economy and the kind of challenges faced with in the globalised and liberalised environment and at the nature of development services SMEs need to grow on sustainable basis.
I. Small and Medium Enterprises: Engines of Economic Growth
Each country has its own definition of a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME), some basing it on the number of employees, while others on monetary measure (capitalisation, investment turnover and sales) or a combination of two or more. However, the World Bank Group SME Department has adopted the following definition of SME for its programmes:
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Measure
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Micro Enterprise
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Small Enterprise
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Medium Enterprise
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Employees
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10 or less
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Between 10 and 50
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50 to 300
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Total Assets
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$100,000 or less
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$100,000 to $3 million
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$3 million to $15 million
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Total Annual Sales
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$100,000 or less
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$100,000 to $3 million
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$3 million to $15 million
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II. Role and Place of SMEs
Wide variations in definition of an SME notwithstanding, it is well known that SMEs, generally, account for bulk of the enterprise population in a country, irrespective of its level of economic development. They, comprising manufacturing facilities, trading entities and service providers, have been contributing substantially to the Gross Domestic Product, employment generation and exports . They have been the prime mover of industrial development in many developed economies. SMEs’ role in building a solid industrial base can be gauged from the fact that they not only represent bulk of the industrial enterprises of most countries in the world but are also nursery of entrepreneurs.
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Contact us for organizing all kinds of events, tailor-made training programs in Goa for NGOs, Corporates. Please contact: Samadhan Foundation, Goa
Mr. Kishore B Chhatar
