From Silicon Valley to Swaziland - Rick & Wendy Walleigh (motivational books for men .TXT) 📗
- Author: Rick & Wendy Walleigh
- Performer: -
Book online «From Silicon Valley to Swaziland - Rick & Wendy Walleigh (motivational books for men .TXT) 📗». Author Rick & Wendy Walleigh
Our final Mukuru stop was at the home of our tour guide, Cecilia, who won the YWE regional first prize for her knitted clothes’ business and was a speaker at the YWE final competition. A good entrepreneur, she brought product samples and sold a number to the judges and guests, including me, at the competition. I ordered 5 scarves in Kenyan colors, gave her my business card and asked her to call me when they were ready. A week later she called to ask when she could deliver them. Since I was in Uganda, I requested she come to the office on Wednesday the following week. When I asked how much the scarves were she said Ksh. 500 (~ U.S. $7)—I assumed per scarf. The next Tuesday night she text messaged me (SMS is the local term) to confirm I would be in the office Wednesday afternoon. She arrived on time, wearing one of her colorful scarves on her head. I paid Ksh. 500 for all 5 scarves—her pricing. I then told her that she could get much higher price in Nairobi proper and if she would come back to me with her competitive research, I would buy many more scarves at the higher price. Two weeks later, she called to say that she hadn’t had the time to do the research, so we discussed meeting in July after I returned from the U.S. to research together.
In her Mukuru home on July 4th, she showed the Nike guest her products and knitting machine. He bought a baby outfit and scarf. Cecilia explained how she almost had enough money to buy a more compact knitting machine for herself. Then she would hire and train another girl to use the current device, thus expanding her business capacity by 100 percent.
It is people like Cecilia who are the hope for Africa, especially African women. Her smile and enthusiasm are contagious. She is a natural leader, organizing her Mukuru YWE alumnae and friends to build better businesses through improved record-keeping, stock purchasing, etc. I fully expect that in 10 years or less, with her entrepreneurial savvy, she will run a very successful business with multiple employees and locations. With her leadership skills, I predict she will someday be a Kenya Member of Parliament.
A woman selling used clothes and other goods at a typical market on the outskirts of Nairobi at this typical “kiosk” which can be seen anywhere outside the main office districts of Nairobi.
Lake Nakuru National Park, located in central Kenya, is home to many thousands of flamingoes which love the plankton that grow extensively in the alkaline Lake Nakuru and similar nearby lakes.
Peponi Hotel is the premier place to stay on the tiny island of Lamu off the coast north of Mombasa, Kenya, known for its mixed Arab-African aka Swahili culture.
The traditional buildings on Lamu Island off the coast north of Mombasa, Kenya, are constructed with “bricks” containing local shells, as seen from the top of one building in Lamu Town.
Along the Kenyan coast and around Lamu Island, a key form of transportation is the “Dhow” boat—viewed from our hotel. Typically used by old Arab traders, they still move most of the island’s goods, local folks, and tourists to and from the mainland.
“Matooke” are starch-bananas (vs. our typical, sweet banana), which are a staple in most of Uganda. TechnoServe Uganda advisors, seen here, work with Matooke farmers to improve their livelihoods by increasing harvests, providing market connections, and helping diversify their crops.
Ugandan smallholder “Matooke” farmers often transport their harvest by bicycle to their local co-op on market day.
Matooke bunches are consolidated at regional co-op sites to be trucked to larger Ugandan markets like Kampala.
Advised by TechnoServe Uganda staff, some Matooke farmers have diversified their crops with other produce like potatoes, seen here with a woman farmer.
Some Matooke farmers, seen in central Uganda, have added dairy cows to supplement their income.
Based on TechnoServe Uganda advisors’ recommendations, some Matooke farmers have diversified their income with goats, for their milk, and chickens, for their meat.
To memorialize the estimated 500,000 to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutu tribespeople slaughtered during 100 days in mid-1994, Rwanda constructed a garden and museum for viewing by both Rwandans and foreign visitors.
The Grand Prize Winner of the Young Women in Enterprise (YWE) Business Plan Competition in 2007 was Cecilia Katungwa from the Mukuru slum in Nairobi. Besides a new mobile phone she won the equivalent of several hundred dollars to expand her successful but small knitted-clothes business.
Wendy accompanied her Young Women in Enterprise (YWE) colleagues in giving a tour of the Mukuru slum in Nairobi to the visiting Nike Foundation representative. Entering the slum required crossing over the “river.”
The purpose of touring Nairobi’s Mukuru slum with the Nike Foundation representative (the major program donor) was to visit a few Young Women in Enterprise (YWE) members, requiring us to walk down typical streets there.
One YWE program manager, Esta Kamau, led us toward Cecilia Katungwa’s and other YWE club members’ businesses down a side street through Nairobi’s Mukuru slum, when we were visiting there with the Nike Foundation representative.
One YWE club member’s business in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum was a milk kiosk where the young woman owner provided healthy boiled milk in clean cups to the local residents, like the children seen here.
Managing Budgets and Donors
As with many companies and non-profit organizations, in TechnoServe, fall is the time for planning and budgeting for the upcoming year. In every organization, matching expenses with revenues is a challenge. There are always too many good ways to spend money to improve performance than can be justified by existing or planned revenues. Hopeful managers who submit prospective budgets are almost always disappointed as their superiors are forced to cut back their anticipated expenses. Although I had gone through this many times in the commercial sector, I had to learn some new twists common to nonprofit development organizations. As with most other similar organizations, TechnoServe’s revenues come primarily from project awards. Government agencies, such as USAID, corporations, and large foundations provide TechnoServe with a fixed amount of money for a particular period of time to accomplish specific goals. For example, USAID might provide TechnoServe with a three-year grant to increase the incomes of cashew farmers in a particular area by 50 percent. Since most projects last several years, the majority of the next year’s funding is already committed when the annual budget has to be created. However, the abrupt starts and stops of project funding make it very difficult to create a consistent level of funding and a smooth budget.
The idea of programs with fixed budgets, specific objectives, and limited timeframes is a good one for accountability; but it generates challenges for the organizations receiving the grants. As anyone who has worked in a project-based organization knows, there is always a challenge of matching resources (primarily people) to a changing workload as projects come and go. It was a particularly challenging year for the Kenya office since a big project was ending, meaning that a lot of people would be available but would not immediately have work. We had proposed a number of new projects but hadn’t heard back yet from the potential donors. For some organizations, this would not have been a problem because they hire people to do a specific project and immediately let them go when the project finishes. TechnoServe believes that it can produce a greater impact by having a longer-term commitment to its employees and continuity in its ongoing development operations in the countries where it has its offices. They try to maintain a portfolio of development projects and balance resources to meet the requirements.
Usually TechnoServe was able to maintain a core of highly experienced employees in all of the country offices, but there were fluctuations in employment levels as programs came and went. Some practices in the donor community make this situation harder for all development organizations. First is the project orientation of nearly all donors. This is a manageable challenge when the projects are long enough (minimum three years) and the donors’ priorities don’t change too radically over time. Some donors are very good about establishing and maintaining their direction; others jump around to the “cause du jour,” making it difficult for their grantees to have any continuity in their programs. Another challenge is that donors want their recipients to spend exactly what they have been granted, no more and no less. In the private sector, it is usually good to come in under budget on projects. In the development community, donors want you to spend all of the money they gave you to do exactly what you said you would do. They don’t want you to shift their money to other programs or to give it back to them. And of course, they are not willing to pay for overruns. Under-budget projects are usually handled through “no cost extensions” that allow the projects to continue a little longer than planned and help a few more people.
A third challenge to nonprofit organizations is donors’ previously mentioned aversion to anything called overhead or administration. Donors justifiably want as much money as possible to be spent directly on the intended beneficiaries in the field and not on people doing administration in offices. However, someone has to answer the phone and greet people at the office door; someone has to keep track of the money being spent and someone has to be developing a proposal for the next project. Donors recognize the necessity for all of these; they just don’t want to pay for them. They want these expenses to be paid from some other source of funds. One of the consequences of all of these practices is that organizations like TechnoServe cannot afford to have employees without immediate project assignments. That is the reason we were so concerned as we prepared our budgets.
Along with the budgets, Fred had a number of people in the office preparing concept papers for potential new projects. A concept paper is a three-to-five-page document describing a potential project, its costs, and its benefits. These are used to
Comments (0)