In Baghdad, military civil affairs and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Izdihar project recently coordinated to provide two days of training in financial planning and business association management to 18 small business owners from the Al-Rasheed and Al-Karradah chambers of commerce.

The training was designed to help business associations build capacity, giving leaders and entrepreneurs the skills to expand their organizations and create new jobs.

"We are working hard to help these chambers of commerce become vibrant, functional organizations," said Maj. Carlos Molina, a civil-military operations economic development officer from the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division. "[USAID's Private Sector Development] project is a perfect fit for our needs as it is focused on growing the private sector in Iraq and already provides excellent training for small businesses in a number of key areas."

The first day of training introduced the small business owners to accounting techniques and discussed cash flow, budgeting and an organization's balance sheet. The second day featured training in how to build a business association, how to generate money to run the association, how to select issues to advocate on behalf of the members and how to become a more respected board member or leader of the association.

"The training programs are great and hard to find inside Iraq," said Mahmood Shakir from the Al-Karradah district. "It has helped me a lot. It will help me establish our chamber in Al-Karradah."

"We are excited to be working with the civil-military operations team to strengthen the business management skills of small business owners," stated Khalid Al-Naif, head of USAID's Izdihar project. "The desire of the businesspeople to gain new knowledge and skills bodes well for the future of Iraq's private sector."

According to Molina, the military's partnership with the Izdihar project is just the start of support that will help build the capacity of the local chambers. "We definitely will be providing more training programs...and we are working with USAID to bring microfinance loans to these small businesses as well."