Building entrepreneurial literacy among villagers in Indonesia

ABSTRACT This article presents findings from interviews with Indonesian villagers who limited access to quality education. To minimise this educational disadvantage, a village community of entrepreneurship was designed to help improve villagers’ socio-economic capitals and empower villagers to become entrepreneurs. An exploratory study of this intervention programme was enacted to identify whether this village community of entrepreneurship helped build villagers’ entrepreneurial literacy. Findings showed the village community of entrepreneurship provided villagers with a space for learning entrepreneurship, and the villagers had informal educational opportunities. The villagers also reported that their heightened awareness of entrepreneurship could build their entrepreneurial literacy. It was also found that the programme improved the welfare of rural communities. The article concludes by recommending how this model may be adapted and adopted for rural communities worldwide seeking to create learning communities to improve literacy and reduce poverty.