Most, if not all, of the people have a negative outlook towards the overall ability and disposition of the poor to make a sustainable living for themselves. They think that the poor who are involved in microentrepreneurship are uninformed, impulsive and clueless in managing and expanding their business. But oblivious to these people is the reality that other poverty-stricken communities have also built simple but money-generating cooperatives which are able to support their members needs not just for their labor, but also for other aspects of their lives. In this case, NATCCO is aware that the poor are not in anyway hopeless when it comes to finance and entrepreneurship. They think that the poor only needs a great deal of technical and financial attention and support in terms of their livelihood.

In this light, this material was developed out of the training program conducted by NATCCO about the basics of business planning and management for aspiring entrepreneurs. The training document takes on a lot of topics from setting up the mission and vision of the cooperatives, finding products and services to be offered by the cooperative, up to the right processes and protocol coupled with proper technical skills to run the organization. Hopefully, this will help realize the Credit Union Microfinance Innovation (CUMI) program in the local cooperatives’ future training, seminars, activities.