page_title: Organization workshop
section_title: Post-OW
hierarchical_section_title: Organization workshop / Impact / Post-OW
caption_attribution_description: English: Closing Ceremony Laurel OW Costa Rica 2005 with 543 participants
context_page_description: The Organization workshop – or "Laboratorio Organizacional" in both Portuguese and Spanish – is a CHAT-based learning event where participants master new organizational as well as social knowledge and skills through a learning-by-doing approach. It is aimed at large groups of unemployed and underemployed, a large number of whom sometimes may be persons with lower levels of education. The OW addresses locally identified problems which can only be solved by collaborating groups. During a Workshop participants form a temporary enterprise which they themselves manage, an enterprise which contracts to do work at market rates. Once the workshop temporary enterprise is over, organizational, management and vocational skills gained can be used to form new businesses or social enterprises.
  The creator of the OW is the Brazilian sociologist Clodomir Santos de Morais. The main elements of the workshop are a large group of people
context_section_description: Sponsoring bodies since the 1960s have ranged from United Nations organizations to local and international development agencies and NGOs, among them FAO, ILO, UNDP, terre des hommes, Concern Worldwide, Catholic Relief Services, Hivos and Norwegian People's Aid, Redd Barna and, recently e.g. in South Africa, the Soul City Institute and government departments such as South Africa's Department of Social Development.
  Correia considers drawing up a correct quantitative, let alone qualitative balance sheet of the OW experience a "virtually impossible" task. Based on results of qualitative research into the OW she conducted, she tentatively "ventures some conservative estimates": 15% of OW participants are estimated to subsequently start an enterprise of one kind or another which, in the case of Brazil – (anno 2000, the publication year of 'A Future') – amounts to 9,000 enterprises.
  An additional estimated 30% (equivalent to 8,000 persons) subsequently find work. Counting in family members, she arrives at 27,000 persons who, in her research sample, "have drawn some economic benefit from the OW, ... at an estimated unit cost of a mere $16 per person". Andersson similarly estimates the impact of the 2009–10 Kwanda program in South Africa: 5,000 participants; 200,000 community member beneficiaries; 2,000,000 viewers and listeners reached per week.
  The OW's "massive" claim – (re: Capacitación 'Masiva' in Spanish/Portuguese) – is at its most visible when, as in the case of Brazil, Honduras or Costa Rica, it is run on a regional or national basis (known as PROGER/PRONAGER or National Job & Income Generation Program) which, in de Morais' mind, ought to be the OW's default mode: 110,946 people participated in 282 OWs in Brazil from 2000 to 2002. The report further cites 3,194 resulting enterprise start-ups and 25,077 new jobs; 22,000 participated in 104 São Paulo PAE (Self-Employment) Program from 1996 to 1998, resulting in 711 new enterprises, including People's Banks. 27,000 Hondurans and other nationals participated in more than 200 OWs during the 1973–1976 national PROCCARA Program in Honduras which led to the creation of 1,053 new enterprises, some of the bigger ones still operating today (see e.g. Hondupalma below). 6,000 Cooperative (INSCOOP) workers graduated under the 1979 POR/OIT/PNUD/007 Program (Portugal).  The Costa Rica (2010–13) Brunca Region GERMINADORA Project was decreed a "Project of Public Interest" by President Chinchilla Miranda in 2012. In 2015,  411 persons participated in the Westonaria (S. Africa) Organization Workshop, originally planned for 350.
  Long-term survival rates of OW-initiated enterprises—(as compared to conventional micro-enterprises, where failure rates allegedly may be as high as 80% in their first year of operation).—are exemplified by e.g.: 13 surviving—in 2000—Costa-Rican cooperatives; the Honduran—(ex-1970s PROCCARA campaign)—palm oil growing and processing plants Hondupalma, Salama and Coapalma. In 1999 the Costa Rican Coopesilencio cooperative celebrated its 25th year of operation with a book by Barrantes. Since then, Coopesilencio has added eco-tourism to its activities.
caption: Closing Ceremony Laurel OW 2005. Among the Vocational courses the 543 participants chose were English (see banner), Carpentry, Electronics, Confectionery, IT, and others.
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