PACER Plus developed an entrepreneurship training curriculum and training of trainers programme to help to develop the entrepreneurial skills of i-Kiribati labour mobility workers and their families. Photo: PACER Plus Implementation Unit
Staff from the PACER Plus Implementation Unit are helping develop business skills among seasonal workers in Kiribati.
PACER Plus is the trade deal in both goods and services that has been embraced by most of the Pacific.
A key arm of it is labour mobility.
Governments want their people to be able use the capital they bring back from their overseas labour to develop opportunities at home.
The Implementation Unit's labour mobility work programme wants to help Pacific nations leverage labour mobility for sustainable economic development through entrepreneurship and business investments by workers, their households and local communities.
It has an entrepreneurship training curriculum and training of trainers programme to help to develop these skills among the i-Kiribati workers and their families and will extend it throughout the Pacific nations that are part of the trade agreement.
"This was in view of the need to help workers who go on labour mobility schemes to consider long term approaches to sustainable livelihoods, household income diversification strategies," Labour Mobility Specialist Alisi Holani said.
Dr Holani said not all the workers would be on the programme for ten years.
"Most workers will be on the programmes, on the schemes for three to four years and then given that it is hard physical labour, a lot of these workers would seek to use the earnings they had acquired and the skills they had learned, in Australia or New Zealand, in business investments or entrepreneurial activities."
'Important development dividend for Kiribati'
Kiribati's Minister of Commerce, Industry and Co-operatives secretary Rui Tabutoa said, "our labour mobility workers are an important development dividend for Kiribati."
"One of the ways we can harness this dividend is through encouraging entrepreneurship and business investments," Tabutoa said.
"Many workers and their households are interested in business investments but lack entrepreneurial skills.
"This curriculum is part of our initiatives to cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship amongst our workers and their families, enabling them to maximise the benefits of labour mobility and contribute to Kiribati's economic growth."
Dr Holani said what has been done so far is basic training but the PACER Plus Implementation Unit plan to take it much further.
She said the unit was looking at ways to build on this initial training module.
"[By] looking at a catalogue of potential business opportunities, we are working with the Ministry of Commerce in Kiribati to identify what are the business opportunities, because obviously that is one of the constraints to small business development, especially with the workers coming back .
"They have the capital but do not know what are the business opportunities in their country," Holani said.
She said they may be training workers prior to departure for overseas, then during the overseas tenure and again on their return home.