Today we held the first of two award ceremonies honoring and awarding young women from the slums cash prizes to start businesses. It was a huge and successful day with folks from Safaricom, Coca-Cola, other local partners and one of the Ministers of Parliament all supporting these aspiring entrepreneurs. It was a day filled with emotions, solidifying how life-changing our program has been for so many young ladies. There were many tears of joy shed by all.
It was a seriously busy week with all the preparations accompanied by a few late nights but all worth it in the end. Now the weekend is here, and I'm in Nairobi and Brian is still in Uganda. He's been there since Sunday night and will return next Thursday. He's off to hike and explore waterfalls throughout one of the national parks. I'm certain he will have a lovely time, though I wish I were there to share the experience.
But I'm exhausted and it's sleepy time for this chica. So this weekend will be full of much needed shut eye, yummy tea to warm the soul and a good book to do some exploring of my own.
Here's a story I wrote about one of the top businesses who won today:
Big Five Making Big Waves in Kawangware
Around the corner and halfway down the dimly lit alley, rays of sunlight cast down on four young women peeling the shells off groundnuts as they prepare to make their next batch of tasty peanut butter. One crouches down, hovering over a small circular sieve while another sits on the ground sorting and filtering, working tirelessly for several hours at a time. For some of the ladies it is their first time in business and as they confidently describe, all with large beaming smiles, it has been a tremendous success.
Like the big five that dominate the great savannah, these young women are making waves in Kawangware selling deliciously, professionally packaged, tasty peanut butter. The ingredients are straightforward, a few kilograms of groundnuts and salt. The supplies are manageable, charcoal and a jiko for roasting, sieves for sifting, self-sealing containers for packaging and the rental of a milling machine from a friend for grinding the nuts into creamy peanut butter.
With training and support from TechnoServe’s Young Women in Enterprise (YWE) program, these bright young entrepreneurs were able to realize their potential in catapulting their business idea into a reality. YWE’s main objective seeks to raise the level of entrepreneurial activity among Kenya’s adolescent girls and young women, particularly the most vulnerable, to catalyze the start-up of income and employment-generating, women-owned small enterprises. For six months, these four have been attending weekly classes in an enterprise club in Kawangware called Excelling. There they have received training in four critical areas: entrepreneurship, employability, life skills and financial literacy. Their trainer, Jahazi, enlivens the curriculum with his exemplary training techniques allowing the girls to fully appreciate and enjoy the basics in starting and running a business.
With a small start up grant of Kshs 1500 from the experiential business-learning module in YWE, the Big Five hit the ground running and never looked back. Within a week they learned how to make peanut butter from a friend, accurately conducted market research, delegated roles and remarkably jelled as a team wanting to succeed in business. Young Women in Enterprise is committed to supporting these aspiring young businesswomen and plans to do so with the next phase of its’ program, called aftercare. This component includes business start up support, linkages to short-term and long-term employment opportunities, linkages to micro-finance institutions for additional lending options, and continuous learning (field trips, guest speakers, networking events, computer skills).
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