Photo: Paul Szewczyk in Unsplash
Cambodia is one of the first countries in ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) with a dedicated Inclusive Business (IB) strategy. Inclusive Business are understood as commercially viable business lines that create scaled-up, innovative and systemic solutions for the relevant problems of the poor and low-income communities. They are designed to deliberately benefit men and women at the base of the socio-economic pyramid, which are typically the bottom 40% income groups.
In October 2021, the Inclusive Business Action Network (iBAN), a global program under GIZ, contracted GlobalCAD, in consortium with Emerging Markets Consulting, to prepare an Inclusive Business Coaching and Mentoring Guide (IB-CM) for Cambodia.
The idea was to pilot test it in cooperation with key stakeholders in the country and make suggestions to broaden the tool for use in other southeast Asian countries.
In March 2021 the government of Cambodia –through the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation– endorsed its “Strategy for creating a better enabling environment for Inclusive Business in Cambodia” (the IBeeC strategy). One of the eight key recommendations of this strategy is to run specific coaching for companies that wish to transition from mainstream business to inclusive business models, activities and initiatives.
Business coaching
One of the strategy areas for implementing IBeeC is business coaching. Business coaching and mentoring is important to encourage companies going the IB route. These institutions would be ready to incorporate dimensions of Inclusive Business in their programs and expand their current business coaching mainly focusing on commercial viability towards achieving social impact.
And this is where GlobalCAD, with the project “Organizational and Management Consulting for Inclusive Business Coaching and Mentoring” comes in.
This assignment was proposed to be conducted through a five-step work-package methodology that responded to the core requirements of the organization. The project included reports on each participant of the inclusive business field in the region, briefing papers of the different tools available in the process, and a series of workshops that were organized to enhance capacity building of the organizations from the ecosystem.
The project will be running until October2022 and will end with the presentation of the IB-CM at the ASEAN IB Summit.
With this, GlobalCAD will contribute to enhancing the Cambodia’s business sector by building the tools needed to work towards a more inclusive country.
