listing of the gender and occupation of its members to identify those that were engaged in a non-farm enterprise. Most COs are segregated by gender. In our sample, there are 447 male COs (60 percent), 251 female COs (33.6 percent) and 49 mixed COs (6.5 percent).<sup>12</sup> Using data from this listing exercise, half of the COs were randomly assigned to receive business training while the rest did not (control group).

The timeline of the experiment is reported in Figure 3. A baseline survey was conducted in November 2006. The original sampling framework included all male and female CO members that according to the listing exercise had a non-farm business and five other members selected at random from each CO. In practice, enumerators ended up interviewing everyone that attended a special CO meeting that was called to conduct the baseline survey. Individuals with businesses were encouraged to attend the meeting. The resulting sample consisted of a total of 4,161 members of which 2,532 had a business. The break-up by gender yields 2,144 men (and 1,325 businesses) and 2,017 women, of which 1,207 had a business. The sample accounts for 61 percent of all members and roughly 90 percent of all businesses in the listing exercise. During the meeting, interest in hypothetical business training was elicited in a uniform manner across all COs.

While the baseline was underway, 24 NRSP staff members attended a 31-day “training of trainers” course taught by ECI.<sup>13</sup> In January 2007, trained NRSP staff held orientation meetings in treatment COs to announce the business training. Interested members were asked to sign up for training and to suggest the most convenient time and venue. Training sessions were organized by area, trying to accommodate time and venue constraints, especially for women.

From February to May 2007, 47 business training sessions were held. Appendix A describes the content of the training sessions, which were based on the “Know About

> 12 In mixed COs, enumerators had to draw randomly from among male and female members separately. 13 In October 2006, NRSP submitted the CVs of about 30 staff members (10 in each of the study districts) From these, ECI selected 24 (8 per district) based on their presentation and communication skills, facility with basic math skills, basic computer literacy and diligence. Potential trainers were required to also have 3 to 4 years of experience working with communities and to have at least a Bachelor degree in commerce or a related field. After the training, ECI finalized the list of 18 NRSP staff members who were to offer EDT to CO members. The Training of Trainers had three main modules. The first (11 days) introduced basic business concepts, the key modules of the business training. Trainees also engaged in a business creation exercise (See Appendix A). During the following 10 days, trainers conducted a center assessment (see Appendix A) and selected trainees for a business training session. The third module (10 days) provided teaching resources to deal with both literate and non-literate audiences and gave trainers an opportunity to test their teaching skills through mock training sessions.

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