Recap!
As this year’s program came to an end, we all left Kenya with countless stories and a refreshing experience. The last five weeks were insanely busy. A typical day consisted of each team going to their assigned location to deliver the day’s lesson. Later we spent a considerable amount of time in Nairobi’s traffic to get home and prepare for the next day. If time permitted, we usually had dinner at one of Nairobi’s fine restaurants, trying a new cuisine every time. We made sure to keep our weekends just as busy, so we had different plans arranged to visit different places in Kenya.
Through out the course: As the days went by, we were finishing one workshop after the other and working with the class on different activities and lessons. The participants started to look deeper and more critically into their ideas and businesses through the business model canvas. They also had to complete market surveys and researches. We were then able to understand their prospects better and that helped us to become more effective in helping them. I particularly enjoyed delivering the finance topics and lessons. Most of the Kenyan participants, especially the current business owners, knew they had to do more bookkeeping and to keep track of their financials in order to borrow money and grow, so they were keen on the finance parts of the course. Throughout this part though, we noticed a significant drop in people’s momentum, and I started to wonder how would the course end in relevance to our expectations.
The End – Regroup & Adapt: The last few days of the course were exciting and challenging at the same time. We got to the part where the participants were supposed to write their business plans, and we were very excited to read through the executive summaries and see how our work has helped them thus far.
I have to admit though, reading through the first few executive summaries made us realize that the expectations we had were not exactly met by each of the participants. That said, we had to go home, regroup, and figure out the best way to help everyone as much as we could.
What we ended up doing was to split our class into two main groups. The first group had participants that either had existing businesses that they wanted to improve, or ones that had very solid, implementable plans. The second group consisted of participants that had ideas that required some market research and significant improvements. Iain Verigin took over the second group were he essentially led it through a similar approach to what he does in Lean LaunchPad. The participants had to leave our location during the day and complete different researches related to their business ideas. For instance, one of Philip’s objectives was to visit the leading DVD store in Mathare, and to find out the services they provide (Philip wants to start his own DVD store). The rest of us worked with the first group, where we helped them to design a plan for their new expansion ideas, and to help them put together financial models that incorporated the details of their required loan and the financial forecasts as a result of the cash infusion.
The end result was amazing!
Each participant had to present three main topics on the last day: the business model canvas, a financial plan summary, and timeline of their plans as entrepreneurs for the next 12 months. This would summarize the work they have done in the last few days through the stuff they have learned through out the whole month. They all did very well in their presentations, and all of them had clear plans of what they should do in order to get to their goal of starting their own successful businesses.
The Final Result: Though not everyone had a full business plan towards the end, the participants certainly walked out with three things. Firstly, the knowledge of what they should do, and what to find out in order to start a business that will have decent chances of success. Secondly, a timeline plan that includes the consecutive milestones backed up by financial data that will help them to get where they want to be in a year. And finally, an overall increase in their business acumen as entrepreneurs. Carol told me that she’s finally able to make estimates and keep records of her financial performance. Kennedy explained how the market research he had to do throughout the course made this course unique in its practical approach.
SSE was truly an enriching experience on multiple levels. My entrepreneurship and business knowledge was greatly influenced by this trip and by the number of people we worked with. That includes our UBC team, the Strathmore students, and the Kenyan entrepreneurs. Apart from work, a blog post can’t describe the beauty of the places we saw and the good times we had in Kenya. Maasai Mara was beyond fascinating. The rest of Kenya was nothing short of breathtaking. And the locals were nice and friendly. Their smiles will not be forgotten and hopefully we’ll get to see them again soon!
Posted by Shadi Bahou