GREEN ECONOMY
Green entrepreneurship is a major axis in the national green economy strategy in Tunisia. According to its founding act, one of the fundamental and statutory missions of the Tunis International Center for Environmental technologies (CITET) is training eco-entrepreneurs and supervising young entrepreneurs in the environmental field.
This mission was confirmed by the role that was attributed to CITET by its administration as a main actor of Tunisia’s transition to a green economy.
Thus, training entrepreneurs at the national levelis part and parcel of CITET’s main strategic orientations and its operational action plans.
CITET currently has a considerable expertise and an extensive experience in supporting and coaching young graduates with the objective of founding green enterprises, thanks to its active participation in the realization of eco-entrepreneurship-related national and regional projects.
The “SwitchMed Eco-Entrepreneurship Training Program” was one of CITET’s main references in the domain. Indeed, being the focal point of the above-mentioned program, CITET worked as a local partner, in collaboration with CONECT, to ensure the implementation of an eco-entrepreneurship training program during the 2015-2016 period. It comprised a training session for trainers and 18 training sessions on behalf of the 320 eco-entrepreneurs belonging to the regions of the Greater Tunis, Sousse, Gabes, Gafsa, Sfax, and Jendouba, andended with the selection of 5 winners. Following the success of the SwitchMed Project, CITET launched, during 2016, a complementary eco-entrepreneurship training program on behalf of the 40 best SWITCHMED eco-entrepreneurs to consolidate their projects on the technical, regulatory, and managerial levels. Thus, with a view to implementing the green economy national strategy and contributing to Tunisia’s socio-economic development of Tunisia and to the sustainable management of the environment, CITET developed, during 2017, a training and support program for the creation of eco-projects.
METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK
• Acquire the fundamental knowledge allowing to know the feasibility of the creation and the perpetuation of their eco-enterprises;
• Strengthen the eco-entrepreneurs’ positioning with regard to the market’s requirements;
The specific objectives of the eco-projects’ training and support program that we propose revolve around the transfer of knowledge (through training), capacity building (through coaching whose objective is to align the eco-enterprise project with the Tunisian market and its requirements), the launch and perpetuation (through a mentoring policy after the creation of the eco-enterprise).