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Workforce development
 France

Beyond microcredit: counseling for corporate creators

Since 2006, the Veolia Environnement Foundation has been supporting the Association pour le Droit à l'Initiative Économique (Adie) in the opening of Espaces Adie Conseil: the future entrepreneurs find indispensible counseling there to create their own companies and develop their activity.This partnership has been renewed for three years (2010-2012) with new objectives of the deployment of innovative tools to help the micro-entrepreneurs.

Fact sheet

  • Identity : Association pour le Droit à l'Initiative Économique (Adie)
  • Place : France
  • Sponsor : Éric Lesueur, Veolia Environnement
  • Foundation grant : €180,0000 at the Board of Trustees of May 15, 2006, €60,000 at the selection committee of January 26, 2010, €120,000 at the
    Board of Trustees: March 15, 2010

    Association pour le Droit à l'Initiative Économique (Adie), which was created in 1989 by Maria Nowak, introduced the microcredit principle into France.Thanks to relatively small loans, it helps people sidelined by the job market, who lack access to conventional bank credit, to create their own businesses, and therefore their own source of income.Since its creation, Adie has financed more than 65,000 small businesses, generating 78,000 jobs.

    In Bangladesh, and in many countries of the South where this system has been flourishing, creating a business is a relatively simple procedure.By contrast, in France, it is necessary to grapple with complex legal, administrative, social and tax systems.Thus, to guarantee the success of the entrepreneur that it finances, Adie has developed complementary services.It is opening Espaces Adie Conseil (EAC) throughout continental France, where it proposes effective counseling.

    Espaces Adie Conseil: personalized support

    How to set up a project?How to start a business?How to develop one's own company?Around these three guidelines, Adie receives the candidates for company creation and helps them construct their projects.

    Approached by Adie, the Veolia Environnement Foundation signed a partnership agreement with the nonprofit in 2006.Since then, it supports the development of the EAC regularly and significantly: the financial aid granted has permitted the opening of twelve Espaces Adie Conseil in Asnières, Lille, Nice, Rennes, Rouen, Grenoble, Reims, Poitiers and Valence, Lyon, Caen and Nantes.

    Espaces Adie Conseil, genuine training facilities, offer group and individual workshops, upon initiation and downstream of company creation: from administrative to legal issues, from commercial action to banking, all the aspects of corporate management are addressed.

    Apart from this personalized counsel, business creators can also meet other entrepreneurs there, exchange ideas, and possibly put potential commercial synergies to work.

    In light of these convincing results, the Veolia Environnement Foundation has decided to continue its partnership with Adie for new three-year period, from 2010 to 2012.

    New objectives: volunteering skills and environmental enhancement

    The partnerships continue with new objectives: in the expanding network of Espaces Adie Conseil, Veolia Environnement employees, by volunteering their skills, can participate in the dissemination of the counseling activity.

    Other tools for assisting the rapid materialization of company creation projects will be developed with the financial aid from the Foundation, particularly Adie Connect: on online microcredit site, Adie Connect helps manage applications from the micro-entrepreneurs smoothly and effectively.On this site, they will also have training (e-learning and serious games), as well as personalized counseling from financial and legal experts throughout the development of their activity.

    A new avenue of cooperation is also being considered between Adie and the Foundation: designing and testing a pilot device to promote the creation of proximity activities with enhanced environmental value in vulnerable neighborhoods, in the form of "outreach microfranchises".In an early phase, the system will be tested on "equipment micro‑rehabilitation diagnosis" activities in the areas of water and energy: these activities have an environmental as well as socioeconomic impact, particularly in condominiums threatened by financial difficulties (repairing leaks, improving the living environment, etc.).

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