With the highly possible increase in downsizing trends, more and more people are made redundant. The next logical step for those people are: looking for another job and starting a business. The former is more desirable for those who place income security high in their list, but the latter is more desirable for those who are being fed up with all the corporate politics and seemingly unfair downsizing. hatever step you want to choose, I recommend you to consider the latter for two reasons:
1. Throughout the history of small business, being downsized is one of the most successful life changing experience in born new, thriving, entrepreneurs.
2. Getting back into the workforce with the standard you had before is not as easy as you think – businesses cut costs, and one of the area that are being heavily cut is payroll – bottom line, businesses want more for less these days.
Without further adieu, the following is the top 10 small business ideas for 2009 that might entice you to plunge into entrepreneurship:
1. Do-It-Yourself business
Most of the case, DIY reduce costs. If you can provide products and services that allow people to DIY something, such as creating your own home cleaning products, you are on a roll.
2. Energy saving business
This idea is definitely hot in the past few years, and in 2009 the emphasis on energy cost-cutting regimes will push any energy saving businesses even further. Producing or distributing LED lightings will be the right business this year.
3. Online business
Ah, my favourite small business idea. The wonder of the Internet is this: For as low as $50 (a domain name + web hosting fee) or even for free, you can start a lucrative online business and shoot for a chance to create a six figure business before this 2009 ends! Of course, one key factor: your competitiveness in a low-cost, high-competition market.
4. Baby boomer-related business
The highlight of the year: Baby boomers are retiring from the workforce, creating a mega-problem to the economy – thanks to the flawed MediCare, Social Security and retirement funds. Creating a business that act as a safety-net for those baby boomers will boom your business sky-high. One example of such business is entrepreneurship training business for baby boomers.
5. Cheap and/or recycled product business
“Turning trash into cash” type of business is very, very lucrative this year. With the increase in material and production costs, making use of ‘useless’ materials and create something out of them will proved to be a thriving business. One example: Creating Converse-like canvass shoes out of wastes – the scrapbooking style.
6. Home based business
The best cost-cutting innovation of all – work from your home! With the ever-presence of the Internet, working at home.
7. Charity and philanthropy
Giving as a business? Never – However, you can be a business that match recipients and givers, such as the web-based Kiva.com that match small business borrowers with lenders.
8. Outsourcing
There is a better solution in your cost cutting campaign – outsourcing. Outsourcing main benefit is leaning your company so you are more nimble and resposive to changes. The key in outsourcing is finding the right companies to outsource to. The business idea: outsourcing company that manage service buyers needs.
9. Mobile business
No longer a trend for road warriors out there, but a growing trend for new entrepreneurs who envision themselves as location independent business owners. Again, the Internet plays a major role in mobile business, as well as the more powerful and cutting-edge mobile technologies and gadgets. Your iPhone and MacBook Air will enable you to run your business wherever you are.
10. Bootstrapping and cost-cutting consultancy business
As every business owner aim to be leaner and more responsive, bootstrapping and cost-cutting consultants will have their moments this year – roles, such as energy consultants, Internet startup consultants, and similar others will enjoy substantial growth this year.
That’s it for my version of top 10 list. Care to share yours?
NEW YORK – On January 6, 2009, Ethiopia’s parliament enacted a new law on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that criminalizes most human rights work in the country, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch said that the law is a direct rebuke to governments that assist Ethiopia and that had expressed concerns about the law’s restrictions on freedom of association and expression.
The action comes just a week after the government reversed an earlier pardon and rearrested one of the country’s leading opposition politicians on flimsy grounds and said she will serve out a life sentence, highlighting a growing trend of political repression.
“In the space of just eight days, the Ethiopian regime has outlawed independent human rights work and jailed one of the country’s most prominent opposition leaders for life,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government is conducting an all-out assault on any kind of independent criticism.”
The Ethiopian government claims that the new law, known as the Charities and Societies Proclamation (NGO law), is mainly intended to ensure greater openness and financial probity on the part of nongovernmental organizations. But instead it places such severe restrictions on all human rights and governance-related work as to make most such work impossible, violating fundamental rights to freedom of association and expression provided for in the Ethiopian constitution and international human rights law.
The law considers any civil society group that receives more than 10 percent of its funding from abroad – even from Ethiopian citizens living outside of the country – to be “foreign.” These groups are forbidden from doing any work that touches on human rights, governance, or a host of other issues. Because Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, with few opportunities for domestic fundraising, such constraints are even more damaging than they would be elsewhere. Under the law, groups based outside the country, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, are barred from doing human rights-related work in Ethiopia.
The law also creates a new government entity, the Charities and Societies Agency, with sweeping powers and an arsenal of onerous and byzantine requirements that will enable it to choke off independent civil society activity with red tape. The right to appeal is severely limited and is not extended to so-called “foreign” groups at all. Human Rights Watch has produced a detailed analysis of a recent draft of this law. The enacted law is not substantially different from that draft.
“The NGO law is repression, not regulation,” said Gagnon. “If enforced, this law will make Ethiopia one of the most inhospitable places in the world for both Ethiopian and international human rights groups.”
Human Rights Watch said the law is especially alarming because the government already permits very little independent civil society activity or peaceful dissent. The country’s preeminent human rights group, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), is almost alone in producing extensive reporting inside Ethiopia on human rights abuses. In response to its reporting of government repression following Ethiopia’s 2005 national elections, many of its staff were forced to leave the country or spent time in prison. Under the new law, the group will be considered a foreign human rights group because it receives most of its funding from international donors such as the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC. It will either have to abandon its work or do without the funding it needs to meet its costs and pay its staff.
Countries that provide assistance to Ethiopia, including funds that keep the government afloat, have generally turned a blind eye to government abuses. However, many expressed private criticism of the NGO law, viewing it as a major step toward institutionalizing repression and creating impediments to development, which many support through Ethiopian NGOs. Human Rights Watch urged donor states to press for significant amendments to the new law or for its repeal. In the short term, they should urge the Ethiopian government not to enforce its most damaging provisions.
“Countries supporting Ethiopia should insist that the NGO law be substantially amended or repealed,” Gagnon said. “Anything less would be a green light for even more egregious acts of repression in the coming year.”
The new law is part of a broader trend toward political repression. Even though the country’s political opposition has fractured since the 2005 elections and poses little real threat to government control, the authorities have continued to subject opposition leaders and activists to harassment and abuse. Within the past two months, the government has detained without charge two prominent opposition leaders. Bekele Jirata, the secretary general of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, was arrested in November and accused of plotting terrorist attacks. He has been in prison for more than a month even though the government has failed to produce any evidence against him or file formal charges. On December 28, Birtukan Midekssa, chairperson of the opposition Unity for Justice and Democracy party, was arrested in the street and imprisoned on old charges that Human Rights Watch believes are politically motivated.
Birtukan had been arrested in November 2005 along with dozens of other opposition leaders who encouraged public protests after losing the controversial 2005 elections. Government security forces put down those protests by force, killing hundreds of unarmed demonstrators. Birtukan was convicted of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and sentenced to life in prison. She was pardoned after lengthy negotiations and after she spent 18 months in prison. The government claims that her pardon was conditional on an apology for her crimes. It says it ordered her re-arrest over reports that she had publicly denied having apologized for her actions or asking for a pardon, and that she will now be imprisoned for life.
Ethiopia’s already-dire human rights record has worsened in recent years. Ethiopian military forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in two conflicts in Ethiopia and in neighboring Somalia, with no meaningful effort to hold those responsible to account. Federal, regional and local officials have regularly harassed, arbitrarily detained, and subjected to torture critics of the government, and have denounced human rights groups that expose these problems. As a result, there is little independent criticism and political opposition in most of the country. In local elections in April 2008, the ruling party and its allies won more than 99 percent of more than 4 million elected positions, most in uncontested races.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — The United States, Ethiopia’s main donor, warned Friday that a new law adopted by Addis Ababa restricting foreign-funded aid groups may curtail its assistance.
Under the new law, any group that draws more than 10 percent of its funding from abroad will be classified as foreign, and thus banned from working on issues related to ethnicity, gender, children’s rights and conflict resolution. “We recognise the importance of effective oversight of civil society organisations… However we are concerned this law may restrict US government assistance to Ethiopia,” a State Department statement said.
Despite criticism, Ethiopia’s parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed the bill, which the government argues is solely to safeguard citizens’ rights.
Georgette Gagnon, the Africa director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the law is a “repression, not regulation.”
“If enforced, this law will make Ethiopia one of the most inhospitable places in the world for both Ethiopian and international human rights groups,” she said in a statement.
The Horn of Africa nation, a key ally in Washington’s “War on Terror” against Islamist extremists, received more than 900 million dollars in aid from the US in 2008.
Ethiopia, a poverty-stricken country of 77 million, is among the world’s chief aid recipients.
Press Statement
Robert Wood, Deputy Spokesman
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC
The United States is concerned that the Charities and Societies Proclamation (CSO law) passed this week by the Ethiopian Parliament appears to restrict civil society activities and international partners’ ability to support Ethiopia’s own development efforts.
We recognize the importance of effective oversight of civil society organizations to ensure accountability, efficiency, transparency, and a clear set of operating procedures for NGOs. However, we are concerned this law may restrict U.S. government assistance to Ethiopia, particularly on promoting democracy and good governance, civic and human rights, conflict resolution, and advocacy for society’s most vulnerable groups — areas the Ethiopian government has defined as critical for development.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a perfect example of lip service
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) – Ethiopian rebels who warned oil explorers against working in their region are issuing empty threats that will not deter the government from developing their homeland, a senior Ethiopian Woyanne official said on Friday.
This week the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) told Malaysia’s Petronas it would not allow any activities in the country’s remote east, and said working there would make the firm an accomplice in war crimes by the Ethiopian Woyanne military.
The government rejects accusations of abuses during its counter-insurgency operations in Ogaden, which borders Somalia.
“Such empty threats by the terrorist ONLF group will not deter the government from continuing development activities in the region,” Bereket Simon, special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi, told Reuters.
“Such threats, being aired by ONLF supporters in London, are just another example of their reckless behaviour.”
Petronas, the Malaysian state-owned company, is one of more than a dozen international explorers hunting for oil and gas deposits in different parts of the huge Horn of Africa country.
The rebels have long objected to Addis Ababa inviting foreign energy firms to work in their arid homeland.
In April 2007, ONLF fighters killed 74 people in a raid on an Ogaden oil exploration field run by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China’s biggest refiner and petrochemicals producer.
PASADENA, California (UPI) — A U.S. researcher has made great strides recently in the field of fuel cell research.
Sossina M. Haile, a fuel cell researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a founding member of the company Superprotonic Inc., is working to make fuel cell technology more practical.
The most efficient fuel cells need a large space and large amounts of heat, and the ones small enough for practical applications need more platinum than the earth holds.
But Haile, a native of {www:Ethiopia}, said she has made small breakthroughs that strike a balance, Fuel Cell Works reported. She has reduced the amount of platinum needed in smaller cells. She and her team also have reduced the amount of hydrogen needed to fuel the cells.
Haile and her team have focused on developing fuel cells that run on ethanol or biomass.
This week the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) told Malaysia’s Petronas it would not allow any activities in the country’s remote east, and said working there would make the firm an accomplice in war crimes by the 
Sossina M. Haile, a fuel cell researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a founding member of the company Superprotonic Inc., is working to make fuel cell technology more practical.