Business Programs

The many amazing Micofinance organizations around the world that help some of the world's poorest lift themselves, their families and their communities out of poverty with dignity and confidence by providing entrepreneurs with loans and financial services to grow their businesses.

However, these promising entrepreneurs need more than just capital, they need the skills, inspiration, connections and access to markets to take an existing sustenance level business and grow it into a ‘small enterprise’.

Leveraging our past experience managing a global business network, and corporate strategy consultancy, we have created the “Village MBA”, a 1-week program that gives existing entrepreneurs in developing communities a valuable and locally relevant business education.

By partnering with the Microfinance organizations and ‘following them’ the vMBA program empowers the entrepreneurs to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by their new capital to expand their businesses.

Overland travelers that have a strong personal interest and background in business, whether as entrepreneurs, operations officers, managers or consultants, are passionate about development and enjoy working with entrepreneurs are encouraged to partner with The Muskoka Foundation to expand the VillageMBA program.

Travelers find a Muskoka Village that matches their travel route and arrange to teach a VillageMBA course to a small group of local entrepreneurs.

The Muskoka Foundation provides:

• Detailed curriculum tailored for a 1 week MBA workshop in a community
• Preparation workshop pre-trip to prepare you to teach the course in the villages
• Reliable, on-the-ground partnerhips to set up the workshop and follow-up with the entrepreneurs
• Proven business idea “kits” relevant for developing communities that travelers can pass on to local entrepreneurs to start new businesses
• Loan of a ‘Muskoka Expedition Classroom’ including laptops, teaching materials and a projector.
• Connections to strong local and global organizations that can provide additional capital, networks and access to help promising local entrepreneurs leapfrog their businesses

Overland travelers that choose to expand the VillageMBA program will bring significant and sustainable improvements to the communities by:

• Providing business skills to promising entrepreneurs to help build their expertise and expand their businesses
• Encouraging entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, providing jobs for a larger number of people in their local communities
• Establishing mentoring relationships with entrepreneurs
• Setting up new local businesses based on global success stories

• Inspiring and connecting local entrepreneurs to larger networks
  

A substantial portion of The Muskoka Foundation's travelers are already sucessful entrepreneurs and past-executives, so this area of our programs is of particular interest. We have Internet Entrepreneurs providing mentorship to new start-ups in Latin America and South Africa. We have former consultants planning business courses for street kids in Cambodia who have gone through an IT training program. And we're rolling out the vMBA program to be deployed via mobile classrooms on almost every continent.

If you have an interest and substantial experience in running & growing businesses, and would like to connect with a group of entrepreneurs on your travels please contact us, and we'll help set you up!