Entreprenurial and Leadership workshops

High on the task list for this year for the MBA's was presenting a series of Entrepreneurial and Leadership workshops for the Refugees that are connected to the LEAP School.  Workshops of this nature are few and far between here in South Africa, and almost never apply to the Foreign Nationals, or refugees as they are usually called. As you may recall back in the early days of my time here, Subina and I went to visit quite a few NPO's to research what it means to be a refugee, what paperwork is needed, how one goes about getting status, and how one goes about getting a legal job with that paperwork and refugee status.  What we found as a recurring theme was that Refugees want to start their own businesses and need training in how to do that.

Anyone that knows me knows that I don't enjoy doing presentations, let alone trainings, so the entire idea of Subina and I getting up and doing a number of four-hour workshops, well, it had me worried and stressed.  Fortunately, Sarah Diefendorf, who has been doing international trainings of this sort, returned to Cape Town to help us.

On Friday, July 30, we kicked off the first of three workshops - this first workshop would be nine hours in length, spanning two afternoons.  The workshop was held in a cold (well, of COURSE it was cold, no buildings here have heat!) hall at the LEAP School.  As it turned out, all of the participants were women, coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Zambia.

Day 1 of the training focused on how one would start their own business.  Subina (here, making some last minute notes) began the process with a lesson on Mission/Vision, and set the women to begin to write their own mission and vision statements, but without a clear idea as to what they would want their business to be, most of the women struggled with the concept.

As an aside - let it be said that even people dealing on a regular basis often struggle with the difference between Mission and Vision, until I offered the way I had learned it:

My Mission today is .......

My Vision for tomorrow is .......

That seemed to make it a little easier for the women, but even so, the lack of a business idea and limited English speaking skills made it difficult.

After we discussed what a Marketing plan might be, we moved into my part - Finances and Budgeting.  Thinking that, perhaps, many of the women had not dealt with business bookkeeping, I had devised a very basic worksheet that listed these sorts of questions:

What is my business idea?
How much money do I need for my family each month?
Can I operate my business out of my home?
How much money do I have to start my business?

From there, my idea was to walk through Gross Income, Net Income, Fixed Costs, Variable Costs, and sort of back into how much each of the women needed to earn every month from their new business.  But that idea got side-tracked at Question #4:  how much money do I have to start my business??

One woman spoke up as I was going through the worksheet.  I have no money, she said. None.  How do I start a business with no money??

!!!  ummmmm ......

And from there, my section of the workshop was totally off the PowerPoint slides and I was on my own.

I asked what here idea was, she was thinking that she wanted to start a computer training center. Of all of the ideas circulating around the room, this was a easy one for me to run with.  I asked for ideas from other women, and no one had any ideas, so I suggested that this woman find a friend with a computer and trade services.  She can babysit the children in exchange for using the computer.  Or she could find a computer center (such as a library) where she could use the equipment, or even, to use the computer lab at the LEAP School.  All of these ideas seemed to difficult for her, and for many of the women (can you tell how negative this was getting?) until I stopped and said that yes, this IS difficult.  It is HARD!  This is NOT easy.  That owning your own business is HARD work.  A few women who had owned their own businesses back in their home countries (mostly DRC) joined in to agree.

Thankfully, we ran out of time for the afternoon.  It felt brutal, it felt awkward, it felt like I hadn't explained things very well.  I offered that anyone who wanted to come for individual tutoring could come an hour early to the Saturday afternoon session, and quite a few women nodded their heads.

The next day, true to my word, Subina, Sarah, and I arrived an hour early. Probably five - seven women were waiting for us, having arrived at 9:00 am for the 1:30 training session.  These were the women that had a good business plan, and many of them had worked through the worksheet the evening before.  It felt good that they were able to follow the logic, and I had a great chat about Indirect and Direct costs with one former accountant.

Day 2 was focused on Leadership, what are the qualities of a Leader, what makes someone a good leader.  The goal for the day was for the women to organize themselves into a Community Based Organization (CBO) to provide each other support for the issues that they deal with inside of their communities.  During a brief exercise, the women offered different problems that they face, including high unemployment, lack of job skills, language barriers, and xenophobia.  They eventually settled on the barriers they all face with employment as their top priority.

Mid-afternoon brought a needed break, and the women had tea and buttered bread sandwiches.  I am not sure who donated the bread and butter, yet another undercurrent of South African life, that food shows up here and there.  Watching the women eat, it was clear that that might have been all they had to eat during the day until they got back to their respective homes.

Once the group came back together, the idea of a Community Group quickly took shape.  One particular woman emerged as the Leader, raising her had to say she would organize the group, taking names and phone number of 14 other women who offered to help her.  From there, the new Leader (whose name I did not get) separated the large group into small working groups, hoping to get ideas for a name for this new group.  By the close of the training, they had two meetings scheduled for each of the following Saturday afternoons.



When we, the Americans, left, there was a feeling of empowerment, a feeling of momentum, a feeling that someone was doing something.  I venture to say that the group will change drastically over the next 6 - 8 weeks, and that a new leader will probably emerge, but that's OK.  The fact is, we took these women from not knowing each other, not really speaking to each other, to sitting in groups and organizing themselves into a new CBO.  It could have gone the other way and have been a waste of time, but for whatever reason, it did not, and I consider that a success.