Obra-Negosyo-Eskwela Countryside Enterprise Business Upliftment (ONE CEBU) Program: Students’ Experiential Entrepreneurship Learning

Abstract

This paper documents the achievements and learning realizations of students who participated in the 2010-2011 Obra-Negosyo-Eskwela Countryside Enterprise Business Upliftment (ONE CEBU) Program, a Cebu Province and Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) project, in collaboration with Cebu colleges and universities. ONE CEBUis envisioned encouraging and supporting the development of the countryside micro-entrepreneurs in the province of Cebu, with the help of university students. Consistent with Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT), the learners were brought closer to “concrete experiences,” in the real world business operations of their respective partner micro-entrepreneurs. Together with their faculty coaches and MCCI mentors, the students prepared the enterprises’ business plans which now serve as bases for the enterprises’ utilization of the financial grants provided by the Province of Cebu. Focus group discussions were conducted among the sixteen (16) student-teams after the program season phased out. The results of the interviews support this study’s hypothesis. Students claimed that their actual interaction with the enterprises’ value-chain partners their faculty coaches and mentors in the collaborative preparation of the business plans made them recognize the difference between the traditional classroom instruction learning methodology, highlighting the relevance of the real world experiential learning mode. Keywords - entrepreneurship education, experiential learning, micro-enterprises