Training
VTESS self-employment pathway
Helping young people build businesses of their own.
Practical entrepreneurship, confidence and ongoing support that turn self-employment into a real possibility.
BET is part of Swisscontact’s Vocational Training and Employment Support Services (VTESS) Project, supporting young people with limited access to formal education and employment opportunities to create livelihoods through self-employment.
More than business skills
Starting a business takes more than an idea.
BET combines practical entrepreneurship skills, business planning, empowerment and personal leadership — helping young people build both the capability and confidence to become business owners.
The five-day program is highly practical and designed for participants with different educational, literacy and numeracy backgrounds.
Local capability. Consistent quality.Building local capability to deliver at scale
Designed to travel. Built to work locally.
Katalyst developed the BET program, facilitator materials and delivery methodology, and built the capability of local trainers through a dedicated Training of Trainers program.
BET trainers complete an intensive ToT before delivering the program, learning both the content and how to deliver it effectively for young people from very different educational backgrounds.
Working with 108 Jobs, Katalyst also supports implementation and coaching in the provinces — helping maintain quality while strengthening a network of local trainers and coaches.
From learning to self-employment
A practical bridge from the training room to a real business.
Participants develop their own Basic Business Plan during BET and then pitch their plan. Successful plans receive seed money from VTESS to help establish the business, turning the training into a practical pathway toward self-employment. The business plan is an essential part of the seed-money application process.
- 01
Program Design
Built for the realities of young people in Lao PDR.
- 02
Training of Trainers
Local trainers learn both the content and the delivery method.
- 03
BET Delivery
Five practical, highly participatory days.
- 04
Basic Business Plan
Each participant develops a plan for their own business.
- 05
Pitch
Participants present and explain their completed plan.
- 06
VTESS Seed Money
Provided for successfully pitched plans to establish the business.
For successful pitches
- 07
Business Start-Up
The plan becomes a real livelihood in the participant’s community.
- 08
Coaching
Ongoing local support helps new owners keep moving forward.
Real businesses. Real opportunities.
Local skills become local livelihoods.
BET participants have created businesses across a wide range of trades and services. The businesses reflect practical skills, local demand and opportunities within participants’ own communities.
Tailoring · Beauty & Salons · Food · Barbering · Motorbike Repair · Air-Conditioning · Agriculture
youth-led businesses established
Evidence of change
The impact goes beyond starting a business.
More than 300 young people have now established businesses through the wider VTESS self-employment pathway.
Participants interviewed in the independent VTESS tracer study described greater confidence in talking to customers, promoting their services, negotiating and running their businesses.
Supporting pathways to self-employment?
Turn skills and ideas into businesses.
Katalyst works with development partners to design and scale practical entrepreneurship programs that help people turn skills and ideas into businesses.