But all new products started with an idea. Steve Jobs’s idea? To build a phone that people would fall in love with. What Steve Jobs knew, is that innovation isn’t just about great ideas, it’s about great processes. Process is what allows for innovation. Without process, ideas just stay ideas. Without great process, ideas can’t become great innovations.

Village Enterprise faces a number of complex problems. Problems that I would argue are as, if not more, complex than developing a computer that fits in your pocket. (Let’s be honest, if ending extreme poverty were an engineering problem, we probably would have cracked it by now). We struggle to develop tools that help our business owners to access financial services. We are committed to exploring how to best leverage technology to serve our mission. We need to investigate the best ways to link our entrepreneurs to value chains.

We have some great ideas; but realized we needed a single process to turn those ideas into innovations.

Last year, a few members of our team signed up for an online course through Acumen.org: Introduction to Human Centered Design. Human Centered Design is an approach to designing solutions to problems faced by people, by keeping the end user at the center of the process. IDEO, a global design company, developed the Human Centered Design (HCD) approach and has HCD to design products for companies like Apple and GRID Systems. In the past decade, IDEO has invested in using HCD to address social problems in addition to their core work of developing consumer products. For example, IDEO has worked with Planned Parenthood to design a better patient experience and with the government of the city of San Francisco to design a city-wide emergency response plan.  The course we took was developed by IDEO.org, in partnership with Acumen to provide organizations like us with the tools to apply Human Centered Design to develop solutions to our complex challenges.

We found our process. Human Centered Design offers the perfect avenue for us to combine our values of innovation and openness with our dedication to rigor and evidence based programming.

Over the course of the past year, we’ve worked to adopt Human Centered Design as our organizational approach to innovations in several specific areas, including adapting our program for refugees. However, we quickly realized that systematic problems require systematic solutions, and, in order for HCD to work for Village Enterprise as a whole, we needed to get each and every team member—from field staff to finance officers— on board.  We decided to use the one week of the year that our team spends together at our annual innovation summit to instill a culture and learn the practical tools of Human Centered Design.

We selected two topics that we felt were the most pressing: leveraging the power of technology and strengthening market linkage opportunities for our entrepreneurs. Then, we divided the 60 people who would be attending the summit into two corresponding teams and assigned each person researching into one of these topics using the first phase of human centered design: inspiration.

Inspiration

Inspiration is built on developing an empathetic understanding of your problem and the experiences of your end user. Each team split up into four groups to tackle their inspiration. One group was tasked with learning from the end user. They conducted interviews with our entrepreneurs in their homes and fields and just listened. Group two was asked to immerse themselves in context; they observed urban traders buying maize for a day and walked a day in the shoes of a human resources officer to observe how they engaged with technology on an average day. Group three worked on learning from experts. They set up calls and met for coffee with the leading experts on our two topics. Finally, the fourth group was tasked with learning from analogous inspiration (situations that are similar in concept to the problem at hand, but not exactly the same). For example, one team member interviewed matatu drivers about how they coped with price fluctuation seeking inspiration for how to support our farmers through fluctuating prices. Another team member interviewed representatives from the Uganda Board of Elections to learn about their adoption of biometric data collection. The analogous inspiration team also interviewed our friends at Living Goods for inspiration on using entrepreneurship to reach the ‘last mile.’

Ideation

Teams came to the summit ready to present their learnings and the insights they gained during the inspiration phase. Together, we dove into ideation. Working in small groups comprised of individuals from different functional teams and offices, we synthesized the information we’d learned from the inspiration presentations and categorized it, creating a road map for generating solutions.

Then, each individual brainstormed as many ideas as we could. Our small groups then shared ideas, grouping similar ideas together and identifying ideas that could complement or build off one another. Finally, each group presented their big idea to the whole team. Our ideas ranged from one-stop technology portals with training materials, data collection tools, and project management software to having our business savings groups elect market linkage officers to link their groups to new market opportunities. No idea was deemed too big or too small. Over the coming months, our innovations team is sorting through the gold mine of ideas that came out of the summit to identify those that can be fleshed into pilots to prototype. (Stay tuned for updates!)

What’s next?

Now that the summit is behind us, it feels like our real work is just getting started. We generated new ideas as well as novel ways of looking at familiar ones, but now it’s time to turn those ideas into prototypes, pilots, and iterations. After our HCD deep dive, we now have a process, a roadmap, for how to develop our ideas, test their effectiveness, and roll out our best prototypes at scale. More importantly though, we have a team that has fully embraced Human Centered Design.

Since leaving the summit, there is a buzz at Village Enterprise around HCD. Our country directors are embracing it to tackle operational challenges like grant disbursements and managing remote locations. Our monitoring and evaluation team collaborating with our innovations team to design how we test and measure our prototypes.

The innovations that we develop over the coming years using Human Centered Design might not send shock waves throughout the world like the iPhone. However, we feel confident that by embracing and applying this process, our innovations will help us end poverty for those we serve–better, faster, and more cost-effectively.

The post The importance of process: How Village Enterprise has adopted Human Centered Design appeared first on Village Enterprise.

One busy Friday afternoon my to-do list was growing by the minute. Check in on our contract with the hotel. Could they do a barbeque the last night? Which car would pick up our team from the US at the airport? Our team at Village Enterprise had been waist deep in preparations for our annual Innovations Summit, the one week out of the year when our team gathers in one place, for months now. I hurried into our Assistant Country Director, Peter’s office and plopped myself down in a chair across from him as he launched a skype call about one of the topics we will cover during the summit: market linkages.

The skype ringtone filled the silence in the room. First Violah picked up, Innovations team in Kitale was on. Next Stellah joined, Finance from Soroti represented. Next came Tobias from Migori county and Stephen in the Nwoya office. After a few minutes we were connected with Lucy, Development Director speaking with us from San Carlos, California. Over the next couple of minutes, we had team members from every office, representing every department from field to finance.

As Peter launched the discussion, I sat back and listened as the team dove into discussing how we could immerse ourselves into the context of our business owners to better understand the challenges they face in engaging with markets.

Over the past few months, Village Enterprise has worked to adopt Human Centered Design as our approach to innovations. In global development, far too many ideas start in conference rooms instead of corn fields. Human Centered Design helps combat this by providing a structure through which new ideas can grow out of the lived experiences, challenges, and opportunities of the end-user. The process begins with a phase of research, building empathy for experiences faced by a potential beneficiary or end user. Then, a new product or service is designed based on synthesizing the findings from that initial inspiration phase. Finally, the product or service is prototyped and iterated based on user feedback until ready for scaling.

In preparation for this year’s Innovations summit, set for the week of September 17th, we’ve selected two primary topics core to our strategic goals: technology adoption and market linkages. Everyone on the Village Enterprise team has been assigned to a team working on one of these topics. In the spirit of Human Centered Design, each team is spending the weeks before the summit engaging in empathy driven research to understand the needs of our end-users (in this case our front-line staff and our business owners) so that we can use time together during the summit develop strategies for market linkages as well as new technology tools to pilot in the field.

Within a few minutes of our team discussing how to interview our business owners and brainstorming how we could learn from the experience of our field staff, the spreadsheets, the invoices, the ever-growing to do list faded. I was simultaneously overwhelmed and inspired.

How lucky are we, I thought, that we work for an organization that, every year, invests time and money in making sure our whole team gets to spend a week under the same roof? How cool is it that we are an organization that recognizes the importance of turning big ideas into prototypes to pilot? How special that Village Enterprise ensures that we tap the creativity and ingenuity of every member of our team to contribute to building our innovations.

Every year, our one-week innovations summit gets larger as our team grows. The meetings get longer, the logistics get tougher, the cost increases. In light of that, we have to remember why we do it. We have to take moments to stop and recall why it is the most important week of the year. The summit gives us a filter for our most important work, something to work toward and something to work from. This week together provides a platform for us to work together, from CEO to Field Associate, to develop our strategic direction. Finally, a week spent together in one place, performing in a talent show, reflecting on our failures and learnings, making smores, gives us an opportunity to develop a shared sense of our culture and values.

The next month before the summit will be stressful. Our to-do lists won’t stop growing, the planning will never end, the spreadsheets will become more and more complex. But I want to take more time to stop, to listen to my peers ideas, to reflect on the weight of what it means to be a part of this team, this work, and our wonderful Innovations Summit.

The post Why we hold an annual Innovations Summit appeared first on Village Enterprise.

In the 30 years since Village Enterprise was founded, a lot has changed. Our program has grown tremendously in both scale and nuance. We’ve embraced innovative digital solutions for data collection and management. But what has remained the same over 30 years is our belief that when given the right tools, people living in extreme poverty develop the capacity to lift themselves from poverty. We believe the extreme poor are hindered by lack of opportunity, not by lack of potential.

We believe the same is true of refugees.

According to UNHCR, there are 25.4 million refugees worldwide, the highest ever recorded. Worldwide, 1 in every 116 people has been forcibly displaced as a refugee, asylum seeker, or internally displaced person. Over 1.5 million of those forcibly displaced live here in Uganda. Since 2013 over 1,000,000 refugees have fled to Uganda from South Sudan alone. Uganda, where roughly 27% of the population live in poverty, has some of the most progressive policies toward refugees in the world. Refugees can work. They can participate in markets. They can move freely. They are viewed as an asset rather than a drain on Ugandan society. Uganda shares our belief that when we invest in the potential of even the poorest and most vulnerable, we all do better.

This isn’t always easy. The consistent influx of refugees has placed pressure on the humanitarian sector to expand humanitarian response interventions for the growing number of new entrants, while also offering sustainable livelihood interventions to refugees to reduce aid dependency and promote sustainable escapes from poverty. Earlier this year, Village Enterprise worked with Mercy Corps to examine whether the Village Enterprise program could be adapted to help meet this need. We engaged in a rigorous process, using Human Centered Design, to understand the unique challenges and opportunities faced by refugees in Uganda and adapt our program accordingly. (Check out IDEO.org to learn more about this fantastic process of building solutions with people, for people). We spent four weeks in three settlements in Northern Uganda, including Bidibidi (one of the largest refugee settlements in the world), talking to people, immersing ourselves in context, and trying to absorb as much learning as we could. Our process culminated in a Human Centered Design workshop during which our team synthesized what we had learned, brainstormed potential fixes, and honed our solutions into an approach ready to prototype. Here’s some of what we learned:

Eager for enterprise
The individuals we engaged with during our design process fled South Sudan with nothing. In the year-and a half that they have been settled, they have been dependent on the in-kind donations provided to them. Now, they need stuff. They need new clothes and shoes that fit. They need sauce pans and Jeri (gas) cans. They want to eat meat, and eggs, chew sugar cane, drink juice. They want cosmetics and jewelry. These market opportunities are generally untapped; the small supply can’t meet the demand that is quickly growing as people have increasing financial flexibility. In response, we’re building on our existing business selection processes to teach refugee participants to evaluate these ever-growing markets and to select businesses most likely to be profitable and sustainable.

Integration through entrepreneurship
The vast majority of South Sudanese refugees have been settled in the West Nile region, which is one of the poorest and most vulnerable sub-regions in Uganda. There is a critical need for interventions that address poverty within the host community as well as in refugee communities and to integrate the two populations. What we learned, is that there isn’t just a need, there is a vested interest on the part of refugees to engage with host communities. Refugees aren’t just willing to start businesses and engage in trade with their hosts, they are eager to do so. Working together means access to two different markets: refugee and host communities, and with it, potential for higher value, more profitable businesses. We’ve designed a pilot approach in which we form business and savings groups that contain both host and refugee community members. A community liaison from the host community works with a business mentor from the refugee community to support cohesion and boost potential.

Leveraging linkages
Refugees have a unique set of needs, and to meet them, there are typically a plethora of interventions to fill them. For example, psychosocial support and protection programs are designed to address trauma and vulnerabilities. Education is needed to keep kids learning despite having been displaced. Livelihood programs can’t work in a silo. Programs like ours offer a strong foundation to integrate with other programs and ensure sure that as a whole, a consortium of actors can offer a holistic approach to increasing resilience. We’ve built room for linking our participants to other vital services in our adapted program, leveraging our business mentor model, which offers a platform for household level need-evaluation and carefully counselled referrals. For example, should a business mentor identify a business ready for next-level market linkages, they can link that business to value chain services. If they notice a family in need of psychosocial support, they can connect that family to actors within the settlement providing those services.

We’re new to the refugee space, and we’re excited to keep learning. What we do know is that there are 156,000 entrepreneurs across East Africa who have started small businesses and changed the lives of their families after participating in our program. We also know that there are over a million refugees in Uganda eager to achieve self-reliance. We’re excited to bringing our life-changing program to a new group of soon-to-be entrepreneurs.

The post Using Human Centered Design to adapt Graduation for refugees appeared first on Village Enterprise.

The value of investing in women isn’t news to most of us. Women invest 90% of their income back into their families. Educating women results in drastic decreases in child mortality and population growth. The list of reasons justifying more significant investments in women goes on and on. But why are mom-trepreneurs such a good investment?

When you invest in a mom-trepreneur, you’re giving her the resources she needs to leverage the strengths she already has to transform her family’s life. Recently, we wrote about how entrepreneurship isn’t a talent, it’s a skill that can be taught and nurtured through high-touch, relationship-based programs like ours. In reality, entrepreneurship is actually a number of skills, problem-solving, flexibility, willingness to learn, creativity, etc., that in combination can prepare an owner of small business to thrive. When it comes to entrepreneurship skills, moms have an upper hand.

Moms think ahead

When moms go to sleep at night, they’re already planning for the next day. What time do the kids need to leave for school? Who needs porridge and tea before they leave? When are school fees due? What can she do to buy enough for everyone to eat a good supper? Moms think ahead. Planning ahead is one of the greatest obstacles for people living in poverty to manage successful businesses. Moms are used to thinking ahead. Planning for next week’s stock is nothing compared to the careful planning that goes into making sure her family’s needs are met.

Moms are resilient

Moms in East Africa work 18 hour days, every day, seven days a week. They are up before dawn to fetch water and firewood and only go to sleep after everyone has been fed and bathed. A hard day’s work is nothing new to a mom-trepreneur. Some days there’s no money for supper. Other days, she might have to make do with the last of last week’s soap. Moms overcome obstacle after obstacle to make sure their families have what they need. Mom-trepreneurs don’t need to be taught resilience, they embody it.

Moms are motivated by something larger than themselves

At the end of the day, the power of a mom-trepreneur comes down to why they do what they do. For a mom-trepreneur, profits aren’t just proof of a well-run business. Profits mean kids running home from school after a day spent learning. Profits mean small bellies full of healthy foods that help kids grow strong. Profits mean peace of mind, knowing that should a child fall sick today, she can afford to treat them tomorrow. Mom-trepreneurs are driven by a cause larger than themselves.

Today is Mother’s Day. For the mother’s we work with, today will look like most other days. They will wake up before the sun. They will fetch water and firewood. They will bathe their children and probably go to church. They will come home and prepare lunch before spending the afternoon in their fields, weeding the crops they’ve planted. They will review their businesses costs and revenues from the week and plan this week’s restocking. As they lie awake at night, they will do what most mothers around the world will do as they fall sleep. They will think about their children. They will remember the funny thing their youngest child did as they walked home from church. They will wonder how their oldest child is doing in school. Most importantly, they will fall asleep knowing that their children’s futures are brighter because they aren’t just moms, they mom-trepreneurs.

Investing in mom-trepreneurs is now proven to have guaranteed impact. Recently released results from a third-party Randomized Controlled Trial, the golden standard of impact evaluation, found that the Village Enterprise program led to annual household increases in consumption of US$142.92, US$89.64 increase in household assets, and US$73.92 increase in productive cash flow per family. If you’d like to support a mom-trepeneur this mothers day, visit us at http://villageenterprise.org/take-action/donate/

The post Investing in Mom-trepreneurs: why moms make the best entrepreneurs appeared first on Village Enterprise.

When Rose Achieng and her fellow business owners, Christine and Benta started their small business, they never imagine what it could become. However, over the past year, their first as entrepreneurs, they have learned the value of dreaming big.

Rose’s group used their first installment of seed capital to purchase fabric. Initially, they planned to simply retail the vitenge (colorful printed East African fabrics). However, they quickly found that their customers were more interested in buying finished products, rather than fabrics. Rose and Christine were trained tailors, but they didn’t imagine there would be such a ready market in their village.

They started taking orders, and their business took off. They make some pieces custom made for customers that seek them out. They also make premade items which Benta takes to the markets around their village to sell. Their trademark? Matching dresses and purses. After their first few orders, Rose realized that she use the fabric scraps from making a dress to make a small purse to go with the dress. At a tiny added cost, they could increase their profit significantly.

Barely a year since they first started their small enterprise, it is now worth almost than 80,000 Kenyan shillings! (About 800 USD). Compared to their seed capital grant of 150 USD given in two installments, their growth in remarkable.

While a year ago they had only planned for small retail business, they now run a thriving tailoring enterprise. But they’re not stopping there. They’re entrepreneurs now, always in search of what is next. They are planning to buy sheep for every group member. Investing in livestock as an asset is often a useful way to save money in a non-liquid form. Additionally, as a group they are using a portion of their business profits to hire a piece of land which they will use to cultivate sorghum and millet. Despite a large local demand for these stable foods, there is little supply locally produced. Recognizing an opportunity, these new entrepreneurs were eager to give it a try.

Rose, Christine, and Benta are just three of the 156,000 entrepreneurs that Village Enterprise has trained since 1987. Their live-transforming experience is extraordinary, but not one-of-a-kind. Recently released results from a third-party Randomized Controlled Trial, the golden standard of impact evaluation, found that the Village Enterprise program led to annual household increases in consumption of US$142.92, US$89.64 increase in household assets, and US$73.92 increase in productive cash flow per family.

The post Rose Achieng and the power of dreaming big appeared first on Village Enterprise.

“Watermelon” may seem like a funny name for a business. But Salome, Martha, and Anna have a good reason.

“Watermelons are resilient,” Anna explains. “It doesn’t matter if there is a drought or heavy rains, watermelons can thrive. We want our business to be like that.” And thus far, it has.

Watermelon group launched their business in the spring of 2017. They are engaged in a retail business, buying and selling “jaggery.” Jaggery is concentrated sugar cane juice, essentially a block of condensed raw sugar. In south western Kenya, where Anna, Martha, and Salome live, jaggery is used in animal feeds and eaten plain as a sweet.

Anna and her fellow business owners live in Lwala village in Migori County, Kenya. In Lwala, there is sugarcane growing everywhere.

“Sugar cane is a poverty crop,” says Tobias Ouma, the Village Enterprise Field Coordinator serving in Lwala. Demand for sugar is high, but the canes take two years to mature for harvest. The high demand incentivizes people to grow sugar cane in large quantities, often using land that was previously used to grow foods for consumption. Two years between harvests also means that accruing profits to use for school fees and cover household needs takes longer. Furthermore, sugar cane is often harvested and sold by the men in a household, meaning less money reinvested in household needs.

However, Anna, Salome, and Martha have found a way to use the sugar industry to their favor. Rather than cultivating sugar cane, they buy jaggery in bulk from a processor and sell it in small quantities in their village. They purchase 500 pieces at a time, for around 35 Kenyan shillings each (about 35 cents). Though the price fluctuates, they typically make a profit of about 1,000 Kenya shillings per week (about 10 dollars). They use these profits to pay school fees for their children, and have also purchased one goat for each group member.

Watermelon group is a perfect illustration of the value of investing in female entrepreneurs. “Women are committed,” says Salome. “We use what money we have in our home. And we are more trusting with each other than men, allowing our group businesses to thrive. In fact, though the three of us knew each other before starting our business, we are now very close friends.”

“Before starting our small business and joining our Village Enterprise savings group, my husband used to spend our sugar cane profits drinking in Rongo town. There would be hardly anything left to pay school fees or feed our children. I had a small plot where I would grow a little bit of maize to sell to try and do what I could for our home,” remembers Anna.

“When I first joined the program,” adds Martha, “my husband thought it was just another women’s group.” (Women’s merry-go-round savings groups are common throughout Kenya, however they can be unsustainable and rarely last more than a month or two). “But when he saw that I was using our profits to educate our children and buy goats he became convinced that this program is different.”

Anna, Salome, and Martha are just three of the 156,000 entrepreneurs that Village Enterprise has trained since 1987. Their life-transforming experience is extraordinary, but not one-of-a-kind. Recently released results from a third-party Randomized Controlled Trial, the golden standard of impact evaluation, found that the Village Enterprise program led to annual household increases in consumption of US$142.92, US$89.64 increase in household assets, and US$73.92 increase in productive cash flow per family.

The post Meet Watermelon Business Group! appeared first on Village Enterprise.

We believe that entrepreneurship is a way of life. Village Enterprise invests in fostering the entrepreneurial spirit so that people can lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty. In addition to the business and financial literacy training, seed capital, access to savings, and mentoring that we offer through our one-year Graduation program, this takes investing time and resources in changing not just livelihoods, but mindsets. We have to overcome agriculture as a mindset.

Entrepreneurship in action: realizations in the field

Recently, I was in Muntema, about 20 km outside of Hoima town in Western Uganda with my colleague, Mildred. We were observing a new training module we had just designed to guide our participants through a process of deciding on the enterprise they would like to start using the seed capital we will disburse in a little over a month.

At the end of the training, one trainee stood up to ask a question. “The planting season will be over next month,” he began, “so we would like to inquire why you are giving us capital after the planting season is over. How can we start our businesses if the planting season is over?”

Mildred and I exchanged a look. This man’s question was a shining example of what I mean when I say that subsistence farming isn’t just a livelihood, it is a mindset.

The power of entrepreneurship and the future of farming

We spend three months training our business owners, and provide 150 USD in seed capital to provide an avenue to think creatively, identify new opportunities, and invest in diverse livelihoods.

Our business owners may initially want to plant beans. Or cassava. Or groundnuts. Or any other of the crops that they plant each season to feed their families. With a subsistence farming mindset, our program can be viewed as an opportunity to cover the costs of growing the food needed to feed their families this season. With a shift to an entrepreneur’s mindset, our program is viewed as an opportunity to invest in profitable businesses and diverse livelihoods that create a path out of poverty. This is our challenge: overcoming the subsistence farmer’s mindset to create entrepreneurs.

Just as we believe in the power of entrepreneurship, we also believe in the future of farming. Our participants are farmers, not only because it is a way of life in which they are comfortable but because it is the way of life in the areas where we work, where formal labor is scarce, access to education is poor, and you need to be able to grow what your family needs. The entrepreneurial spirit isn’t just about enterprise, it’s about creativity and innovation. We want our business owners to be creative and innovative farmers, prepared to apply their entrepreneurial talent to diverse livelihoods that both supplement and strengthen the productivity and profitability of their farming.

From farmers to entrepreneurs

Mildred stood up to answer the man’s question, with a few questions of her own. “What do you think you could do with your seed capital when the planting season is over?” she asked.

“We could start a piggery business,” said one trainee. “Pigs are profitable all year-round, and we could have an income when harvest season is over.”

“We could sell silverfish when the season for beans is over,” someone else added. “People need alternative protein sources when beans are out of season!”

The man who originally asked the question stood and said, “We all grow beans. We could build a storage facility and all bring our harvest and store them until the price is high and then sell in bulk.”

Mildred gave him a fist bump.

This group of soon-to-be business owners is overcoming the mindset of a subsistence farmer and adopting the entrepreneurial spirit. Farming is no longer just a way of life; it is an opportunity to innovate their way out of poverty.

The post Overcoming agriculture: How entrepreneurship inspires innovation in agriculture appeared first on Village Enterprise.

The team in the field in Kitgum

I was hot. I was dirty. I was two hours from where I was supposed to meet my colleagues Winnie, Gerald, and Dan to continue to Kitgum, Uganda for a week in the field in Village Enterprise’s newest area of operation.

I pulled my sunglasses off my head and put them on, looking down at the very-broken-down-definitely-not-leaving-anytime-soon bus. After about an hour of hoping that the bus would be repaired, I left in search of somewhere to charge my phone. We were stuck in a tiny town about 100 kilometers from where I was planning to meet Winnie and the team. A few young guys who were running a small electronics shop were kind enough to let me charge my phone with their rechargeable battery pack. As I charged my phone, I explained the situation of the broken-down bus. One of them, Emmanuel, offered to walk me to the nearest petrol station to help me try and find a ride (any ride) to Kamdini where I would meet the rest of the team. As we walked we attempted (unsuccessfully) to flag down a few buses—all full to brim, bursting with passengers headed home for the festival season.

At the petrol station, after several tries, I finally secured a ride with a few consultants from Kampala in their almost full car. Two hours later, I finally met Winnie, Gerald, and Dan. Having waited for me for almost two hours, we continued our journey.

I would love to say that my getting stuck on the side of the road was the first and last of our memorable adventures that week. It wasn’t.

Gerald attempting to open the sun roof to hit the automatic lock.

After an awesome day of trainings and focus group discussions with our newest team in Kitgum, Dan, Gerald, Winnie, and I headed to the field on Wednesday with Anthony, our Kitgum field coordinator, to see our new youth program in action. We split up to make sure we could soak up as much learning from our visit as possible. Winnie and Dan at one training. Gerald, Anthony, and I at another. After maneuvering the car through a narrow footpath to reach the training venue, we introduced ourselves to a group of 15-24 year olds, who were halfway into their training on agribusiness and value chains. Gerald and I sat down and settled in to watch our young entrepreneurs soak up their learning as Anthony went to retrieve something from the car. After a few minutes, I heard the car alarm. We turned to see Anthony trying (and failing) to open the locked car door. The keys? Inside, lying on the back seat.

When the training was finished, and the sun was starting to slink into the horizon, Gerald, Anthony, and I gathered at the car. Anthony had gathered our tools: a long metal wire, a wrench, and a machete. We started with the metal wire in the driver’s side door. No luck. Then we tried prying the back window open in order to stick the wire through a crack to hit the unlock button on the keys. Again, despite nearly an hour of Anthony and I guiding Gerald’s maneuvering of the metal wire, no luck. Next, Gerald climbed on top of the car, wedging the sun roof open a tad with the machete to attempt to come in from above to hit the master lock control on the driver’s door. Due in no part to a lack of effort, this was also not going to cut it. We had about 15 minutes of light left when Winnie called. She listened calmly as we explained the situation, paused, and said with assurance and patience, “Just break the window.”

Thus, the next two days we drove our Prado, complete with a sheet of black plastic covering the now-broken back window to visit more trainings. We were inspired by our team as we watched trainings, and provided feedback and encouragement to our business mentors.

On Friday afternoon, after a long week, we headed back to Kitgum, prepared to begin our journey home. We sat in the car as Dan drove, swapping observations, inspirations, and ideas from the week.

Thump. Thump Thump. Thump-Thump-Thump-Thump. The car rolled to a stop. Flat tire. 20 kilometers from town.

We let out a collective sigh and climbed out of the car. Dan, Gerald, and Anthony began the process of changing the tire, only to find that our jack alone wasn’t going to cut it on the uneven road. Winnie and I hailed down an approaching driver. He offered to let us use his jack, and immediately got down on the dusty road with us, climbing under our car to help. With the help of this good Samaritan, we removed the tire and the four of them attempted to fit the spare onto the car.

It didn’t fit.

Another collective sigh and another good Samaritan to be hailed down. Luckily, another Prado passed, slowed, and stopped. After a simple request, they allowed us to use their spare tire, and meet us in town so we could swap the wheel from the other tire with our spare.

After another hour or two, we were finally on our way. Black plastic flapping in the window, flat tire on the back of the car, sun setting over dry, dusty, beautiful Northern Uganda.

It wasn’t until later, when Winnie and I were debriefing about our incredible and adventure-filled week, that she reminded me about an email that Zach, our COO, had sent the week before. In his email to the team, Zach had offered these words of encouragement and advice to our team:

Be kind. Believe the best in others. Offer and receive feedback as a gift. Focus on solutions, not problems. KBFS: be kind, believe the best in others, feedback is a gift, and remain solution oriented.

I laughed, closing my eyes and shaking my head. This is one of the busiest times of the year, likely the busiest year in Village Enterprise history. Maybe we needed this week, full of obstacles and frustrations, to be reminded of this important advice.

When I was stuck on the side of the road, when it seemed inevitable that we would sleep in the field with the keys locked in the car, and when the odds seemed against us with a flat tire, we had to remain solution oriented. Resisting the temptation to submit to the dread of the minutes of day light slipping away, the frustration of being “stuck,” the temptation to play the blame game, we focused on the way forward, not the way we got there.

Our trip to Kitgum was about working as a team to ensure we are doing all we can to empower the youth with whom we are working in a way that sustainably allows them to lift their families from poverty. To do this, we had to embrace feedback as a gift. After the flat tires and broken windows, we spent our evenings brainstorming new ideas and reflecting on what worked and didn’t work, reminding ourselves to provide feedback with the same compassion and care with which you offer a gift—and receive feedback with the gratitude and humility with which you accept a gift.

When we locked the keys in the car, Winnie remained understanding, believing the best in us—patient in our honest mistake and confident in our ability to find a solution.

Last but not least, from Emmanuel walking to help me find a ride, to the patience and kindness our team had to have for each other, to the good Samaritans who gave us rides and helped us when we had a flat tire, we were reminded of the importance of extending kindness to others, and receiving kindness with grace. Without the kindness of others, our week would have looked much different.

This blog isn’t about is our incredible field team in Kitgum, our new opportunity to serve youth in order to end extreme poverty, or an exciting new partnership that allows us to expand operations in Northern Uganda. These are important topics for another blog. But for this blog, they are important because they are what brought us to Kitgum in the first place—and created the opportunity to learn from broken down buses, keys locked in the car, and flat tires.

My biggest take away from our week in Kitgum is that, at the end of the day, we are all people.

In fact, the Village Enterprise team is composed of just over 150 people, spread across Kenya, Uganda, and the United States, working day in and day out to make this world a better place. And while our mission holds us accountable, we, like any people working anywhere in the world, sometimes need a reminder to remain focused on solutions, not problems; to offer and accept feedback as a gift; to believe the best in others; and above all else, be kind. KBFS.

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Note: This post originally appeared on NextBillion. You can see the original post here: https://nextbillion.net/entrepreneurship-is-a-skill-not-a-talent-the-power-of-the-group-based-graduation-model/

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Every night, Lillian would scrape together whatever money she could find and prepare a simple meal for her family. She would put her children to bed and then, exhausted, she would climb into bed next to them. As she lay down her head, she would pray for sleep. Instead, her worries would start. Her son needed a new pair of shoes. She would have to ask her husband for money. What would they eat tomorrow? How would she pay school fees at the end of the month?

These days, Lillian sleeps just fine.

That is because in March, Lillian started a tailoring business. After three months of basic business and savings trainings, Lillian and her neighbors Rosemary and Violet used their Village Enterprise seed capital to purchase fabric, zippers, and thread and put Lillian’s idle sewing machine to use.

“I had the training,” Lillian explained, “but not the opportunity.”

Before she had children, Lillian took a vocational course where she learned how to sew. But as her family grew, she and her husband struggled to provide for them. The small income they brought in from doing casual labor could barely cover the cost of food. There was certainly nothing left over at the end of the week for beautiful fabrics or fancy zippers.

Through her participation in the Village Enterprise program, Lillian received the capital she needed to invest in a tailoring business. She learned how to run a thriving business, so that her sewing could become her family’s livelihood. And best of all, Rosemary and Violet would be right by her side.

Lillian crafts the dresses, and Rosemary and Violet help to add zippers and decorations before taking the completed dresses to sell door to door or at the market. When there aren’t too many orders, Lillian patiently trains Rosemary and Violet to use the sewing machine.

I asked Lillian what the most important change she has experienced has been.

Love, she answered. Love in her family and love in her community.

Lillian’s group just received their seed capital in March, so their business is still new. While they have yet to realize some of the tangible gains that will come with the growth of their business, Lillian has already seen great changes in her relationships, and those in her community.

“In those days, if I needed anything in the home, I had to go to my husband,” Lillian remembers. “And when there was no money, we would fight and argue. The stress of caring for our family was too much.”

“But now,” she continued, “the children never go to sleep hearing their parents fight. Now, there is love in our home.”

Lillian and her three children

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