Katrien Broeders

The reason to participate in this project is not only to create chances for the local people to help themselves, but also because I get tremendous energy from making something out of nothing in a dynamic and challenging environment.

My whole life people, who act differently based on other values and cultures, have inspired me. It gave me an open mind to create win-win situations. Furthermore, within emerging markets there’s still room to reach large progress, operate innovative and be entrepreneurial. That gives me the drive and the willingness to become part of the success in emerging markets.

At the age of 22, I saw the opportunity to take initiative in a non structured environment with no external assistance to build a successfully paper factory for the deaf, by which at present there is a chance to export the paper to Europe. A valid preparation including a solid business plan made it happen that I build a paper factory for the deaf. The outcome was a sustainable paper factory and I won the BN/DeStemprijs for small-scale developing aid.

After this success, I have been frequently asked for several innovative projects in developing countries. Recently, I participated in a new development project: building a training centre for vanilla farmers in Papua New Guinea.

Based on the above experience, entrepreneurship is not only building projects from scratch, but also competences of taking decisive and being result oriented.