Winfred Realizes Her Dream

Winfred was a student in our 2007 class. She attended the sessions we held at Kenya Assembly of God, in Bahati. I remember Winfred, because she sought me out each morning she was on site, to look over her homework from the night before. She wanted to open a bakery. At the time the task seemed daunting, but we all encouraged her to follow up on what she'd learned from her marketing survey, and to keep working on her plan.

Fast forward to 2012. Yesterday I had the opportunity to see Winfred's bakery. It opened a year ago. Between 2007 and 2011 she'd suffered a number of setbacks, including losing her mother, and suffering paralysis (which has left her with a slight tremor in her hands.) Afer her mother passed away, she struggled for awhile, but then told herself that she had to get back on her feet. She started saving money slowly, and mapped out the strategy for getting the bakery opened.

When we visited yesterday, three of her employees were busily at work: one decorating cakes, one baking, and the other cleaning measuring cups. The young woman cleaning the cups, pictured here, is an orphan. Besides opening the bakery, Winfred has dedicated herself to giving back to the community, and thus she helps some of the young people in her community by employing them.

When I first heard from Winfred earlier this year that she had started her bakery, of course I imagined a shop displaying cakes, cookies, and the like. As you can see from the picture, however, the bakery is the actual baking facility. People order cakes and cookies, and the bakery delivers (or you can pick up your order). Winfred proudly showed up her order book, her sales book, her receipts, and her expense books. We were happy to see these, as we spend some time in class trying to help our students understand cash flow, and the importance of keeping good records.

Winfred spoke very positively of the many things she learned in SE101, from her UBC student-teachers (Brent McFerran (Ph.D., Marketing, 2009), Jim Atamba (B.Comm 2008), and Jessie Yeung (B. Comm 2008). She was much more modest about all the hard work she had put into making her dream come true.

Winfred gave us samples of cookies and chocolate cake to take back with us to town. The treats would be competitive in Canada. We are planning to have her bake the cakes for our celebration ceremony at the end of this year's program in two weeks. We want our current participants to hear about Winfred's success, so that they can start to see how opening a business is possible with a lot of hard work, a dedicated approach to savings, and some business knowledge.

SE101~ IN RETROSPECT...

I am back in Vancouver, having spent atleast a month of my 2007 summer in Nairobi participating in the Sauder SE101 project. SE101, a great project through which I met many new fantastic people and learnt alot; about myself and certain aspects of life and society. Alot can be said of the project and Kenya in general. The project is a great opportunity for all participants offering alot of learning experiences with potential for more growth in terms of ideas and delivery.

Fortunately, this year we had two sites that we facilitated and I would not be wrong to conclude that these two different groups of people had had different experiences and challenges. The background information, we (Bahati team) received from KIC-our facilitators on the ground, about our (Bahati) participants was immensely helpful. It also provided the Bahati participants a chance to reflect and comprehend the task that lay ahead of them for the next three weeks. Our participants as already mentioned were really great students who actively participated in the activities we prepared for them. However, I feel a greater emphasis needs to be made to enable participants understand their responsibilities as students. Of course, this being a voluntary project that might be hard to enforce!

All participants, more so those from Canada will/would benefit from fully understanding all cultural issues, interactions and differences. Above all, facilitators need to try and grasp the problems and challenges of the participants to make the lessons more meaningful and effective. For, how can one provide a 'solution' to a problem one does not fully comprehend! Above all, this aids and minimises misunderstanding which can greatly affect efficient project delivery. We carried out a class survey midway through the project and I am sure these will be beneficial to future participants. I also feel this project would benefit magnanimously by having a reliable partner on the ground. This partner would play role similar to that played by KIC or Henry i.e follow up, initiation and coordination of the project before and after facilitators arrive and leave.
More sponsorship and support from student associations(e.g CUS, AUC, AMS, SUC, African Awareness etc) Sauder, UBC, family and friends will/would be a big boost to preparations for a succesful implementation of the project.

It was great being part of the second SE101 team to Nairobi and I look forward to contributing my humble two cents to the project. Business, in my opinion is a great self-empowering activity that has great positive externalities and spill over effects. It is my hope that this project rolls outs to different countries and regions and that Sauder continues to facilitate similar projects.

Posted by Jim Atamba

NAIROBI......Party Like the Sun Don't Rise!

Jimzy In.......

Would it be fair if we, young energetic able bodied youth visited a new city and did not taste/tempt the party scene or did not write about it? I think not! So, what does Nairobi city look like when the shops close, bankers go home, and children are safely tucked in? A few members of the SE101 team (names witheld on request, and my writing this should/does not insinuate that I am the party animal of the team. It so happens that tonight the blogging duties fall to me) will take you on a tour of the Nairobi party scene.

TACOS: Location-CITY CENTRE. The music is great, some of the tracks were similar to those played in Canada and I clearly recall two memebers of the team singing along to some of the songs being played. This is where Alvina, Kevin and Steven took to the dance floor-details of which may be found in an earlier blog.

PAVEMENT: Location-WESTLANDS. An extremely great and a must go-to club in my opinion. Had what it takes to make a great club scene. Nice music, perfect ambience, crowd that seemed to be made up of passionate club goers and party people. I noticed the crowd was mixed (not unlike a Vancouver club scene) and was clearly a favorite for tourists/foreigners/expatriates or it was probably the theme night that seemed to attract everyone. It was a 2 in 1 club. With one section of the club playing main stream hip hop music and the other playing techno/garage sounds. The only hustle was getting into the club and the line up stretched about a block. Club cover was about 400Kes, beers 120Kes, a gin shot 300Kes.

QUEUES: Location-WESTLANDS. Also a 2 in 1 club establishment. Despite the flight of steps one has to climb to get to either, it is a fairly descent party place. Both clubs play similar genre of music but are manned by different D.J's. The top floor is an open air club/bar/pub allowing you to party alfresco. With the another club on the 2nd floor where you could relocate if you wished for warmer temperatures.

REZEROUS(not too sure of the spelling): Location-WESTLANDS. A 3 minute walk from QUEUES. Extremely jam packed on all occasions one of the team went there. A wide range of music, pocket friendly prices and great crowd. Other than the line up to get into the club, all is well at this location.

CARNIVORE: Location-CLOSE TO NAIROBI NATIONAL PARK. Yet to be tasted/tested.Though it is well known for its theme nights.

K1: Location- WESTLANDS. Excellent ambience and decor. Wood and grass thatch is the predominant architectural design theme. In essence there are close to three different pubs at this location. Fortunately, there is nyama choma and othe fast food should belly make demands for food. Beer and nyama choma is definitely big in Nairobi and a great combination too experience has proven. Highly recommended you carry along a sweater or jacket. Also a great spot on Tuesdays for Karoke lovers.

And that is it for now. Please note more venues may be added to this list in the near future. So incase you wish to stumble home at 5am the next time you are in Nairobi like........................ you know where the adventures lie.

.................Jimzy Out!

Posted by Jim Atamba

TEACHING 101.......

Jimzy logging in.......

SO....we got off to our first day of teaching with a bang (in the view of Jessie, Jim and Brent who were at the second site in Bahati, Kimathi Information Centre). After a few hiccups in the start, we were able to get through the ice breakers that "Brent pulled out of the hat". Our students were a tad bit short of excellent - interactive, enthuiastic, attentive and showed up in huge numbers. Fortunately, Brent used his teaching experience to delve through the introductory material. This rubbed off well onto Jessie and myself who taught different sections of the material with as much vigour. Soon, I realised teaching isn't so easy. You have to keep tabs on a number of issues concurrently. What and how well did you just deliver the last pieces of information, what comes next, how much time did you take up, how much time is left, are the students fully grasping your concepts, are you grasping the concepts, when is it best to ask questions; I'll clearly have more respect for teachers henceforth. We are located in a church building and Morris, a church leader of sorts asked us to have prayers before and after each training session which depcits the presence and strength of the church/religion in this Nairobi. The location is great, fenced off and has a gate which gives a heightened sense of security. We have benches in our classroom that are not unlike church pews, a black board and even a water toilet in the facility. The neighbourhood is a cross between a residential area and a small commercial center.

Kibera, our second teaching site had an equally eventful day. It was in a different location from last year-a more central location with a strong enterprenual enviroment according to Alvina. This is where Art, Alvina, Kevin, Jairo, Stephen and sometimes Nancy are going to be located for the next 3 weeks. The room is much smaller and they have about 15 participants.

There is a 3rd site is at Sinai where Qaisara, Caroline, Lillian and John taught. They have to themselves about 20 particiapants.

The entire team met for a debriefing session at Sarova PanAfric Hotel to recap their day's work and make plans for a better teaching day 2. Before we left the PanAfric, Brent had good old Felix contact one of his people to get us some safari trip information. While he was on phone, so as to ensure the person on the other end took this offer seriously he said, "....there is some V.I.P's here;you need to come to their hotel room....". So the next time you are in Kenya and need something done urgently -use the V.I.P card. It was on to our guesthouse where I took a quick shower, joined the rest of the team in hq and discussed with Lucy, Felix's travel contact about some safari fares. We then took a trip to Siam Thai, a restaurant on Unga house where the food was pretty good. We retreated to the guesthouse but not before we learnt our last lesson for the day-do not make assumptions about cab fare. Not everyone knows what round trip means. As I sign off, we are in Alvina and Jessie's room playing poker, Brent's going to take a shower and looking forward to tomorrow. Apparently Art keeps Brent out of the room when.............................till tomorrow.

......Jimzy logging out!

Posted by Jim Atamba