Adel is a local development agency created, founded and managed by youth from local rural communities that had the opportunity to graduate in university and then returned to their communities to invest their knowledge, skills and talents to promote local sustainable development. It is a social technology to empower and promote capacity building of young entrepreneurs. Adel works with an innovative approach, as it introduces a business perspective in family farming, which add value to local productive chains, increasing its productivity and profitability.
Adel has implemented a training and technical support center to serve local youth, where they’re accessing knowledge and tools they need to start and develop their business models. After business planning, Adel provides a small loan to each entrepreneur to develop their models in the field, with full technical and managerial support. And also provide access of thouse young entrepreneurs to communications and information technologies (CITs), so they can connect themselves using social networks and online learning and ongoing support platforms.

Problem

Small farmers from rural communities in the Brazilian semiarid struggle with environmental challenges, such as long seasons without rains and the climate impact on the crops (dry soil and poor access to water), the lack of knowledge, and of adequate tools to efficient and competitive agriculture. Farmers don`t work together, cooperating themselves to share tools and structures and so reduce production costs, as they also don`t market their good together, competing one with another and getting their prices even lower, selling to commercial middlemen. Without proper technologies and support, farmers work just with primary goods, with lower added value. The outcomes of those processes are: low productivity and quality in family farming, resulting in low incomes and extreme poverty. In that scenario, youth learn in school that the best opportunities to a better life are in the cities. And their future perspectives are to migrate to cities as soon as they can. Adel believes, although, that those youth are valuable human resources, with skills, talents and with the higher educational levels in the history of Brazilian “sertão”. And that they have an unique opportunity to become rural young entrepreneurs, staying in their communities and developing new farming business models. To do that, young entrepreneurs need access to: (1) knowledge (capacity building in rural business, training and support); (2) credit (small loans) and (3) collaborative networks and technologies.

Solution

To provide knowledge, Adel is building the Youth Entrepreneurship Training Center, where it will do training workshops and offer practical learning areas, such as laboratories and experimental areas. During training sections, youth will learn about efficient farming techniques, managerial tools and business and marketing planning and management. They`ll have full support to identify opportunities to build their innovative and creative business models and plans. The training sections happen applying the pedagogy of alternation – youth stay one whole week in the training center and then stay another three weeks in their rural properties, studying and developing their projects, with ongoing technical assistance from a team of tutors. To provide credit, Adel launched the Vereda Fund, with three credit lines to young entrepreneurs: (1) advised credit to rural businesses; (2) advised credit to rural start ups (seedfunding) and (3) credit by angel-investors (investors chose specific businesses). Adel is also planning to launch a crowdfunding platform. To provide collaborative networks and technologies, Adel is implementing Community Communications and Information Centers in communities that don’t have access to Internet or even telephone. Adel is also building a social network for youth entrepreneurs, where they`ll connect themselves, exchange solutions and discuss about common challenges. It’ll be also an online tool for training and technical support.

Exemple

With access to knowledge (training and technical support), credit (to develop their business models) and collaborative networks and technologies (to connect them with other entrepreneurs, with actual information and with technical assistance), young entrepreneurs from rural communities have effective opportunities to innovate in production chains of family farming in the region, adding value to local goods and making regional farming more competitive in regional markets. Those young entrepreneurs have the skills and possibilities to implement small agroindustries in their communities, using wisely and efficiently the natural resources, managing environmental challenges and processing raw materials and primary products that are already made by their families (for instance, to process goat meat, providing high quality meat to markets). Those young entrepreneurs can also organize marketing arrangements to sell their products in the markets with more competitive and fair prices, without middlemen. In another dimension, young entrepreneurs are empowered to take part in local governance, participating of the decision-making process in their communities` associations and in regional foruns, where strategic agendas and public policies are built. Those outcomes will impact directly in farmers` families, raising their incomes. But will, mainly, create conditions so youth will build future perspectives in the territory, staying in their communities and contributing to their development.

Marché

There are no other organizations working in this same field in our region, making ours the first and only local program to approach rural youth. Nationwide, there are many organizations with remarkable work on urban youth. But just few programs are being developed in rural areas. The same thing happens with entrepreneurship – many other programs work with urban entrepreneurs, providing training, support and credit. But it`s rare to find a program which serves entrepreneurs from rural areas. Adel`s program works with a specific group almost unattended: rural young entrepreneurs. Other rural technical assistance programs in the region have their approaches focused just on small farmers (with no approach for youth) and with distant and bureaucratic methods. That`s a reason why small farmers prefer Adel`s services. Some of those traditional technical assistance organizations are even Adel`s partners, providing training material, instructors and sharing their structures, such as CENTEC and EMPRAPA. Adel is in some of the most important national and international networks to enhance its technologies and approaches, taking advantage of opportunities of partnership and knowledge sharing. Adel is part of Ashoka`s global entrepreneurs network and also of a social entrepreneurs network organized by Folha de São Paulo and the Schwab Foundation. Adel is member of a national network of organizations which develop a youth entrepreneurship training methodology, for knowledge-sharing.