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.

The Challenges of Fundraising

OK - I admit - non-profit fundraising is a thousand times harder than I had given credit for. After years of working for high powered consulting firms with seemingly endless amounts of capital and resources, I now find myself on the complete flip side of the spectrum with no job, few contacts, and very limited resources. Raising money for profitable organizations is challenging in itself. Even though you have developed a fail-proof, fully profitable forecasting model you still risk being turned down by investors because they "don't see enough in it for them" or "the return on investment isn't in line with our growth model". These are corporations with relatively large access to capital and who understand their line of business very well,yet fail to invest internally because the returns are not profitable enough and they don't see the value of investing. In hindsight, raising money for SAI is exponentially more difficult and requires way more creativity to achieve even half the results.

In entrepreneurship, raising capital is the second hardest part to developing any new business venture. The hardest is, of course, developing a product or service that people truly want. This seems to be the deadliest inhibitor to any start up company, as more and more ventures fail to develop a product that directly solves their customers problems. Thankfully the Sauder Africa Initiative has developed a service that is truly unique and inspiring. Our mission helps develop the essential fabric of entrepreneurship amongst those who are passionate about starting / growing a business but lack some of the necessary tools, resources and knowledge to accomplish their goal. Our group is extremely passionate and desperately wants to help our fellow students achieve professional and personal success, but how do we enlighten others with similar passion in order to generate the voluntary donation that supports our cause? One solution is to share success stories of the program with those who may be on the fence in donating to our cause. This helps people understand your passion and the cause to which they are investing. Telling stories is a powerful method to establish a link between the intrinsic value of our program with the inherited social benefit that one receives when donating to the program. I encourage everyone to get excited by reading some of our success stories on the Sauder Africa website. I know these stories will inspire you to give, and support our wonderful cause.