Kimilili Village Phone Salons

The Janerose’s VPS is presently making a bid for a contract to supply a government run secondary school with their foodstuff. This contract would require that the Janerose VPS group plant or buy vegetables, beans, maize and then supply these goods to the secondary school for the students’ consumption.  The students need a mixture of beans and maize, kale and Ugali. The Janerose group would receive a tender, as well as the timetable and the quantities required per each day they are to meet. If they receive this contract, it would be a big boost to their business. We’ll let you know if this happens.

by Lia

The two VPS have been up and running for over a month now. What Rev. Wasike and I have noticed is that the women are anxious to make full repayment on the loan as quickly as possible. They feel this compunction to pay back the loan and believe that it is a better business strategy than adhering to the loan terms. This strategy is not necessary better than learning patience and perseverance.

The way the business is presently set up requires that the VPOs to meet weekly and discuss the progress or the difficulties of the business. These meetings give them the opportunity to talk about things that are not working well. It creates an environment that encourages them, hopefully, to learn to rely on each other. It also makes them have to keep meticulous records of their spending and income. All this discussion and activities steers them towards better business practices.

The terms of the loan gives them a whole year’s time to be a part of this learning process to see if they can develop more and more into better businesswomen. Lastly, it also allows them to save some money to use in supplementary business practices if they do happen to do better than expected. If they pay back the loan quickly, all of these benefits are lost. Thus, they are motivated by these avenues that can make the business more stable over the long run instead of struggling in the present moment.

The participants were eager to learn and appreciated the fact that the trainers, Millicent and Ericah, could hold the sessions in Kiswahili. Any technical English words used by chance were translated. Since so many of the concepts and subjects discussed in the workshop were new to the participants, it seemed the best way to help facilitate their understanding by holding the workshop in Kiswahili. This made it easy for participants to ask questions all the time and to allow lively group discussions during the workshop.

The amount of topics talked about was very many (see above-mentioned list). The participants were very diligent and motivated, and we were able to complete the amount of material we set out to do. Actually, it was an interesting session and there were no difficulties in delivering the materials home to the participants. We had thought that all the new concepts might overwhelm the participants. This was not the case. In fact, we had a very late lunch, not because the meal was not made ready on time, but because the participants kept on insisting that we continue with the lessons. They did not want any interruptions. Finally, Rev. Wasike went up and announced that he was going to teach the next topic “How to go about the business of eating lunch”, which made everyone laugh and agree that it was time to take a break.

We designed the lessons so that we were not only lecturing, since we thought it could be boring for the participants. Instead, we gave short lectures and asked them to make brief notes on what they were learning, and then we involved them in group discussions and practical exercises and calculations in between. This seemed to work very well.

Since there were so many participants in the course (over 20 persons), it would be better to hold two trainings over two days next time.

Feedback:
• Trainees send their heartfelt greetings to Lia and well-wishers who enabled the training and phones.
• Available Youth and Men felt neglected hence requested the trainers to send the word to Lia.
• The women requested for more support to enable business diversification to enable them to be empowered further.
• In the weeks proceeding the workshop, many other women, even some physically not known to Rev. Wasike, are ever calling asking when is the next training is going to be done so that they participate to get knowledge about business.

So, you can imagine their surpise when they arrived at the CBSM school at 7 am on the day of the workshop, to meet with over 20 persons. They all wanted to learn best business practices and could not be persuaded to leave. After much discussion, it was agreed that 21 participators could take part int the workshop and the others would be receiving another workshop as soon as the funds can be found.

The women and men of our workshop worked very hard throughout the long day. Everyone was anxious to learn as much as they could. We are very thankful to Ericah and Millicent for preparing the learning material and for their wonderful instruction.

Three weeks ago Rev Wasike, Millicent Aswata, Ericah Kiptoo traveled from Nairobi to Kimilili to give the CBSM women’s co-op their first business training workshop. The workshop took place on May 16th, 2009 at the CBSM School from 8 am to 5 pm.

The purpose of the training was to empower targeted women with knowledge that could help them run the Village Phone Salon businesses profitably and be self-reliant in business environment. Also, the training needed to instruct them about how to keep records properly, so that they could know in the future if they are making profit or loss and what actions needs to be taken in case of either. Women were also trained on how to manage borrowed mirco-finances (loans) and repayments among others.

In order to achieve the above, the business practice training was designed specifically to meet the needs of the local available challenges in business environment.

Training Topics

1.    Introduction
2.    Factors considered in choosing a Business
3.    Basic Business Management Skills
4.    Business Communication Skills
5.    Time Management Skills
6.    Leadership Skills
7.    Marketing and Customer Care
8.    Setting SMART Objectives and Goals for VPS
9.    SWOT Analysis of VPS Business
10.    Business or Product Diversification available within Kimilili area
11.    Training on Phone Operations
12.    Handing and maintenance of the phones

Methods of Training

Instructional presentation of theories
Group discussions
Participatory class
Illustration of practical examples
Group asking specific questions

In the next post, I will mention how the day progressed.

Twenty women in CBSM community experienced the excitement of participating in their first business management workshop two weeks ago.

Ericah and Millicent in Nairobi, planned and organised the training session. We will write more about the event in the next days.

We have thankfully received a second micro-loan; with this money another women co-op group will be able to open up their own VPS.

Our business team in Nairobi (hats off to Millicent and Ericah) are in the process of making up the training material for our first Village Phone Salon Business Training Workshop. If all goes well, this workshop will take place in the next week or so. After which, the two Village Phone Salons will start their business.