Practitioner Learning Program

The Practitioner Learning Program (PLP) is a SEEP Network initiative which explores key challenges facing the microenterprise field. The PLP is a competitively-run grants program focused on generating, communicating, and leveraging field-based results and lessons from to benefit the industry as a whole. The PLP engages microenterprise practitioners in a collaborative learning process to document and share findings, helping to identify and replicate effective practices and innovations which are then incorporated into tools to help build practitioner capacity. As participants implement their activities, the PLP—through joint meetings, peer exchanges, and virtual information-sharing—provides a forum for asking questions, exploring gaps in knowledge and practice, challenging assumptions, and learning from peers.

The PLP provides a unique opportunity to support the entire microenterprise development practitioner community by: targeting a diverse group of practitioners, listening to practitioners regarding practitioner-selected topics, designing a program around specific learning objectives, and maintaining a focus on hands-on advice, challenges, and results. The PLP’s comparative advantage is the on-the-ground programs with which it works to test strategies in institutional settings common to many practitioners. Furthermore, this model of “learning by doing” has the added benefit of more institutionalized knowledge. When practitioners learn from their own experiences, mistakes and discoveries, the learning itself is often more sustainable. Please click the Current Programs tab to learn more about previous and current SEEP PLP initiatives. Also, please see the SEEP PLP Annotated Bibliography of Learning Products to gain a better sense of the learning generated from the SEEP PLP, located in the Documents section of the SEEP website.

The Microenterprise Development Division of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provides funding for the Practitioner Learning Program.