However, Village Enterprise faces a major challenge: How to create a business plan when some business owners cannot read or write? At Village Enterprise, 33% of our business owners cannot read and 31% cannot write. 17% of business owners have no formal education, 70% have primary education, and only 13% have some form of secondary education.

In response to this, the Village Enterprise field team launched a pilot called the Visual Business Plan. It was termed “visual” because business owners had the opportunity to draw out their business plan. We hoped that drawing would circumvent the literacy hurdle. But, who ever said drawing was easier than writing?

Thanks to Village Enterprise’s inclusive structure, feedback from the field boomerangs back to the office fast. Business owners told us that they could not draw their business plan. Others still drew their plan but months later had difficulty interpreting it. An analysis of the visual business plans on our data platform, Salesforce, confirmed these complaints.

The response to these implementation challenges exemplifies one of Village Enterprise’s top qualities: we are agile. Our team is constantly learning from the field and adapting quickly. The participants in our program are not just beneficiaries, they are our clients and we shape our program based on their needs.

This year, we are modifying our approach. We have developed templates for our business plans: one for agribusiness, one for livestock businesses, and one for retail and service businesses. These templates include pre-drawn images for all possible activities that business groups can partake in. The images include finding a business location, purchasing supplies, hiring employees, conducting market and competitor research, diversifying the business, marketing to new customers, and saving money.

The pre-drawn images incorporate best business practices including environmentally friendly options that encourage business owners to reflect on the type of activities they will employ. During the Visual Business Planning training, business owners will be asked to circle the images that they will participate in—much easier than drawing the image themselves.  They will also record which business activities correspond to which time of the year. They will save their Visual Business Plan in their record books and refer back to it during business group meetings.

In order to ensure this idea is successful at the field level, all of our images have been approved by our Field Coordinators. Moreover, the new Business Plan will be closely monitored in target villages through focus group discussions to make sure that our business owners find this business-planning tool helpful.

Being piloted in the next month, the Village Enterprise team is looking forward to seeing our visual plans come to life. According to Field Coordinator Nathaniel Maiyo, through the new Visual Business Plan, “objectives are attained for our illiterate business owners by meeting them where they are, on their level.”

One image from the business plan agribusiness template that demonstrates planting. Drawing courtesy of Mina Hoti.

The post Sketching the Way to Business Success: Working with Business Owners to Create a Visual Business Plan appeared first on Village Enterprise.

Do people living in extreme poverty think of protecting the environment? Even if they do, do they have the resources and knowledge to positively contribute to the environment? The Business Savings Group (BSG) named Meza in Gidea village sheds light on the answer to these important global questions. It all started when Business Mentor Naomi Kolil trained participants of Meza BSG on protecting the environment.

A key aspect of Village Enterprise’s business training is protecting the environment. Eco-friendly business practices are woven into each training session. Conservation is also it’s own stand-alone module that was designed with the help of the Jane Goodall Institute. In this module, we train participants on businesses that benefit the environment, eco-friendly agricultural practices, and most importantly, show participants how poverty alleviation and conservation are linked—after all, 98% of our businesses rely upon the environment for profit.

After Kolil’s conservation training, everyone had something on their minds: they wanted to plant trees to support their environment. However, they wondered how they could afford to plant trees—normally considered an expensive, long-term investment.

The solution was innovative—exemplifying the entrepreneurial spirit that Village Enterprise hopes to ignite in its participants. They decided to create their own nursery. Members of the BSG banded together and contributed what little money they could on a voluntary basis. Then, they found local tree seeds at a reasonable price and selected cyprus, Tasmanian blue gum (eucalyptus globulus), water berry (syzgium cordatum), and passion fruit tree seeds. Their BSG Secretary, John Mbita Smiyu, offered a patch of his half-acre land to serve as the nursery. They grew the seeds for three months until seedlings were ready to be transplanted. Each business owner in the group paid 10 shillings (10 cents) per seedling. Most bought around twenty blue gum trees, which are known to be fast growing and yield high profits.

Still, the highlights of this initiative was not Kolil’s training, but the knowledge sharing and innovation that came straight from our business owners. In individual meetings with each business owner, it transpired that there were members of the BSG who had very little knowledge on tree planting and maintenance. However, two of the members, John Kutukhulu and Musa Wafula, had been trained in nursery maintenance and tree planting 15 years back by a local agro-forestry program. These two business owners not only retained this knowledge 15 years later, but were also eager to share it with the group. They set up the nursery and trained the BSG members on proper tree planting, watering, and organic fertilizer techniques. The rest of the group, mostly women, now feel confident that they can train others in their community.

As the rainy season commences this week in Kitale, Kenya, the nursery will again start to flourish. The BSG Secretary, John Mbita Smiyu, who looks after the nursery, says there is still high demand among the BSG for more trees and word has spread to other people in the village who have been eager to purchase trees as well.

Business Savings Group member Douglas Omoa plants a tree in Gidea, Kenya. Business Savings Group Secretary John Mbita Smiyu offered a patch of his land to serve as the tree nursery.

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A group of Community Based Forest Monitors huddle over a large sheet of white paper, discussing and debating essential elements to include in a Business Savings Group constitution. The conversation picks up momentum as the participants heatedly discuss which environmental clauses to include in their constitution. This activity was part of Village Enterprise’s five-day business and savings training for 30 Community Based Forest Monitors from the Northern Albertine Rift Conservation Group (NARCG), a consortium of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Chimpanzee Trust, Jane Goodall Institute and Flora and Fauna International held in Hoima, Uganda.

With a long history in alternative livelihood development in forested areas, Village Enterprise recently expanded its work through a partnership with WCS as part of the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) program in western Uganda. WCS is one of the oldest and most respected international conservation organizations in the world and works to conserve more than two million square miles of wild places across the globe. In this case WCS and partners are working with private forest owners (PFO) in the Murchison–Semliki landscape to manage and conserve their native forests by providing a package of incentives, including rural financial services. This work builds off previous WCS-Village Enterprise collaboration: last year Village Enterprise set up six Business Saving Groups in two Private Forest Owners Associations in the district of Hoima. In just two months, some of these groups saved more than a million Ugandan shillings ($290 USD)!

In January 2016, Village Enterprise led a Training of Trainers (ToT) program for Forest Monitors. Forest Monitors, whose community peers identified them to implement conservation practices, play an integral role in carrying out REDD+ activities. At the completion of the January training, the Forest Monitors will, in turn, reach out to other Private Forest Owner Associations, set up Business Saving Groups, and stress the importance of savings and its ability to strengthen the conservation work of the Associations.

The Village Enterprise ToT program focused on adult education, basic savings, record keeping, business savings group formation, and business savings group loaning and lending. Before the ToT, WCS identified private-sector partnerships with four environmentally friendly businesses: maize production, briquette making (a sustainable alternative to charcoal), bee-keeping, and tree and bamboo planting, and Village Enterprise tailored it’s training to these business types.

Village Enterprise trainings for Forest Monitors were interactive and hands-on. Forest Monitors designed their own savings plans and constitutions, and identified which times of the year are most difficult to save in rural areas—vital to preparing annual savings. They also traveled to Village Enterprise villages to witness business training sessions, as well as Business Savings Group meetings. After the classroom training, Village Enterprise will mentor Forest Monitors to provide follow-up, on-the-ground training support. We’re happy to report that the Community Based Forest Monitors now have the skills to conduct these trainings and mentor Private Forest Owners in saving in their own communities.

Dr. Miguel E. Leal, Albertine Rift REDD+ Program Manager, the WCS lead for this partnership affirmed, “Working with Village Enterprise has been great and we are looking forward to expanding our collaboration across the Albertine Rift.”

For Ellen Metzger, Village Enterprise’s Director of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation, “micro-enterprise development is an excellent way to demonstrate to people living below the poverty line that environmental programming in their communities works in tandem with their interests. We’re promoting the message that in order to meet conservation goals, we also need to help families improve their standard of living so that they can invest in their children’s education and future. When those two interests intersect, it creates strong community support for conservation programs.”

Village Enterprise is excited about the opportunity to expand their work in the areas of alternative livelihoods through partnership with conservation programs and groups like Poverty Conservation Learning Group (PCLG) and NARCG.
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For more information about Village Enterprise’s alternative livelihood work, please visit our website: www.villageenterprise.org. And if you’re interested in partnering with us in our effort to expand our alternative livelihoods approach, please contact Ellen Metzger at ellenm@villageenterprise.org.

For more information about WCS’s work with REDD+ in Uganda visit: www.wcsuganda.org

This work was funded by Wildlife Conservation Society with grants from Tullow Oil Uganda, the Darwin Initiative and the Waterloo Foundation.

Business Mentor Evelyne Kusiima poses a savings related question to Forest Monitors.
Forest Monitors engage in an interactive activity charting income fluctuations by season.
Village Enterprise Business Mentor Evelyne Kusiima leads a business savings group training for Community Based Forest Monitors in Bulimya Village, Uganda.

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