Enhancing Potential and Competitiveness of Local Community Business

First session of the workshop

Participant exchanging their ideas

Speaker gave advice to the participants during the group brainstorming.

A very active second second of the workshop

Participants were learning the new skills.

Group presentation and exchange with other participants

This phase provided workshops aiming at expanding innovative skills for the target groups so that they can promote their local products more effectively to sustain their customers and also gain new ones. They also learned about developing products to meet both the sustainability principle and the national standard. Through the activities, the target participants, e.g. local occupational groups and local enterprises, gained those beneficial skills, know-how, and regulation that enable them to run community businesses with increased innovative thinking along with sustainable development goals.

In the first part of the workshops, invited professors, scholars, and governmental officials working on innovative marketing field provided the target participants the key knowledge on the marketing development and also current situation with online marketing in Thailand and other regions. As well, the national standard in product processing to comply with environmental protection was also lectured. Then, in the second part of the workshops, the participants brainstormed in the smaller groups for possible implementation and methods that they can apply in order to improve the performance of the group according to the workshop topic and also to solve the groups’ existing problems. Then, they presented the discussion results to the speakers for comments and to other participants for idea exchange. At the end, participants evaluated the contents, implementation, expectation and benefits of the activities before giving feedbacks to PDA’s CBIRD Centres whose project consultants would seriously take into account and compile them into the policy recommendations for constant and sustainable economic development in local communities in the next steps.

The Project “Business for Social and Environmental Development” is one of the projects that the KAS supported the civil society organisations in Thailand to propel the actualisation of the Social Market Economy Principle in the country. With the workshops, trainings, and study visits throughout the year, the project aims to bring about the quality of life to Thai people in target local and rural areas through having sustainable income and occupation.