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

Meeting the Partners

'Twas an early morning wake-up for some of the team members, and not
so early for others. We discovered that breakfast is from 7 am to
9:30 am, and as jet lag took its toll, some of us didn't quite make it
in time! Breakfast was nice and basic - toast, eggs, jam, the usual -
but Brent the caffeine fiend quickly noticed something amiss: no
coffee! And no tea! We quickly put two and two together -
Seventh-Day Adventists (who run the guesthouse we're staying in) don't
indulge in caffeine! Brent is currently plotting other ways to get his
morning fix.

A note on the guesthouse: we're staying at the LMS Guesthouse and
Conference Centre, and LMS stands for Literature Ministry Seminary (as
the bibles in our room informed us). We discovered rather quickly,
however, that it's normally referred to as the SDA House, when not
a soul had heard of LMS That made it awfully difficult to tell our
taxi drivers where to take us, although fortunately we're just up the
street from the Integrity Centre, a well-known civic landmark. The
place is great - clean, secure, and if you wait long enough for the
heaters to kick in, hot water showers - and we even have internet
access. The only hiccups were when Jim's closet door fell off, and
Kevin nearly flooded the bathroom because the shower didn't drain
quickly enough, but otherwise, home sweet home.

Our first order of business today was at 1 pm, when we met with our
partners from Daystar University and the Ebony Foundation. It was
great to finally meet the students we would be working with, until we
found out that they unfortunately were all in summer school, and would
only be able to collaborate on evenings and weekends. The student
president of SIFE - Students for International Free Enterprise - is
hoping to find more students who would be able to team-teach with us
during the week, but it looks like we might be on our own.
Nonetheless, we had the opportunity to walk through our workshops with
the students from Daystar, and was that ever helpful! We were able to
clear up the translation of some key words into Swahili, and learn
more about how business is generally conducted in Kenya and East
Africa. Within a short hour, we had already made huge progress in
tailoring our workshops to make them more accessible for our
participants. We certainly hope we'll continue working with Daystar
throughout the project.

At 2:30 pm, our next meeting was with our second site partner, the
Kimathi Information Centre (KIC). We met with Jose and Carthy from
KIC, and Kathleen from the International Development Research Centre
(IDRC), a Government of Canada outfit in Nairobi. Kathleen put us in
touch with KIC because she heard about our project through a friend
from Canada, since she's a Sauder grad! She graduated with a BCom a
few years ago, and has been doing some very interesting research over
the past six months on microfinancing, as well as the social impact of
cell phone usage, for her masters program at a university in South Africa.
In fact, she just came back from doing field work in Mozambique. It
was great to meet a Canadian working in Nairobi and find out about work
in East Africa that some of us might be doing one day!

And thank goodness Kathleen put us in touch with KIC - Jose and
Carthy were absolutely amazing! Their energy and enthusiasm for
the project was just overwhelming, and although only in their late
20s, both of them have done terrific work with local youth, pulling
off a nearly 200-person youth symposium with absolutely no budget.
All of the youth that we'll be working with at our second site in
Kimathi are a direct product of the youth symposium, and each already
have their own ideas about what business they hope to start! Based on
current registration, the stats for our Kimathi participants are as
follows: 1/3rd are women; the majority are 18 years old, with the
highest age at 35; most have high school education, a few have
university-level education; and they're all deeply motivated. We're
very excited about working with KIC and have high hopes for their
participants!

So, all in all, a very exciting and productive day. We met with each
of our partners, confirmed many of our arrangements and worked on
details still to be sorted out. We'll be meeting again with the Ebony
Foundation and Daystar tomorrow to confirm whether we'll be
team-teaching with Daystar students, and how many sites in Kibera
we'll be able to cover. Once final arrangements are confirmed, we'll
have a much better idea of what the next three weeks will look like.

And either way, Monday is game time!

Many of us are starting to feel a little nervous, since most of us
have pretty limited teaching experience, let alone teaching in another
country. After this week, though, we're sure we'll be pros - next
thing you know, Sauder will be offering us positions on faculty! In
spite of any anxiety, we're all very much looking forward to the
challenges and experiences of the next three weeks, and are very
confident that as a team, we'll do a terrific job, learn a ton, and
have an amazing time.

Wish us luck!

xo. The Social Entrepreneurship 101: Kenya Team.

Posted by Kevin Keystone