The two VPS have been up and running for over a month now. What Rev. Wasike and I have noticed is that the women are anxious to make full repayment on the loan as quickly as possible. They feel this compunction to pay back the loan believing this is a better business strategy than adhering to the loan terms. We are faced with the challenge of making them realise that this in not necessary so.

The way the business is presently set up requires that the VPOs meet weekly and discuss the progress or the difficulties of the business. These meetings give them the opportunity to talk about things that are not working well. It creates an environment that encourages them; hopefully, to learn to rely on each other. It also makes them have to keep meticulous records of their spending and income. All this discussion and activities steers them towards better business practices.

The terms of the loan gives them a whole year’s time to be a part of this learning process to see if they can develop more and more into better businesswomen. Lastly, it also allows them to save some money to use in supplementary business practices if they do happen to do better than expected. If they pay back the loan quickly, all of these benefits are lost. Thus, they are motivated by these avenues that can make the business more stable over the long run instead of struggling in the present moment.

Rev. Wasike and I just published a post on his blog pointing out the efectiveness and experiences of the business workshop they held in Kimilili.

If you want to read about it, please do (here)!

Three weeks ago Rev Wasike, Millicent Aswata, Ericah Kiptoo traveled from Nairobi to Kimilili to give the CBSM women’s co-op their first business training workshop.

The purpose of the training was to empower targeted women with knowledge that could help them run the Village Phone Salon businesses profitably and be self-reliant in business environment. Also, the training needed to instruct them about how to keep records properly, so that they could know in the future if they are making profit or loss and what actions needs to be taken in case of either. Women were also trained on how to manage borrowed mirco-finances (loans) and repayments among others.

Please go to the Kimilili blog to find out more information about this.

By Rev. Wasike and Lia

Twenty women in CBSM community had the excitement of participating in their first business management workshop two weeks ago.

Two recent University of Nairobi graduates, Ericah and Millicent, planned and organised the training session. We will write more about the event in the next days.

By Rev. Wasike and Lia

We have thankfully received a second micro-loan from a private lender. With this money another women co-op group will be able to open up their own VPS.

Our business team in Nairobi (hats off to Millicent and Ericah) are in the process of making up the training material for our first Village Phone Salon Business Training Workshop. If all goes well, this workshop will take place in the next week or so. After which, the two Village Phone Salons will start their business.

Our goal is to make the workshop learning material available to the other members of this site. Together we can fundamentally profit from sharing such material, as well as our experiences. I know that Rev. Teh's help in doing market research helped us tremendously. Without his group's willingness to take the first steps towards accomplishing such a new form of study, our own market research would not have been easy to accomplish at all.

The Kimilili Village Phone Salon women’s co-op received a private micro-loan from an anonymous donator to start up our first Village Phone Salon. The donor has indicated that if the first VPS is successful and if our business and marketing practices are transparent, he would be willing to make another loan or two. So, we are setting up a business structure and practices that make it transparent to everyone that we are capable of creating future successful business ventures.

This donator’s terms of loan are generous (only 5% interest on the loan compared to the micro-financing agency’s 16-18%), but also follow along the same guidelines as normal micro-financing agency for the women’s co-op.

The Kimilili VPS women’s co-op consist of a team in Kimilili and one in Nairobi.

In Kimilili, the women’s co-op consists of active members who run the business day-to-day and silent members, who act as guarantors on the loan, as well as give moral support, advice and supervise the flow of income and expenditures.

In Nairobi, the supervisory and marketing team consists are responsible for building up and training the women’s co-op in best business practices, planning the opening ceremony for the VPS business, working on marketing concepts, and supervising the bookkeeping responsibilities.

If you would like to read more about our women’s co-ops practices and all the terms and conditions of our loan and how we are going to pay it back , please go to the Kimilili blog post outlining this.

Watched a video discussion group of the Women for Women International

Some of our VPSs will be applying for credit at local micro-financing institutes (MFI), but others will have to be financed through, what I am calling, private micro-financing groups. It looks as though each VPS will need a start-up credit between 300 USD and 400 USD.

In some cases, we will try and form small groups of business persons (1-3 per group) who will each lend the start-up credit for a VPS.

I've been thinking that it doesn't matter whether the VPS are financed through local MFIs and Kiva, or through a private group, the lenders might be interested in following the development of the businesses they have lend their money to. At the moment, I'm thinking  we might continue the blogs on this VPS site with a monthly status report (blog post), but also a twitter feed in the sidebar. That way the sponsor can follow the daily goings on.

What do you think? would it make it more interesting for sponsors and sponsorees? 

Rev. Teh's Jinkfuin VPS group has come up with some market research data. Now it remains for the group to come up with estimates about expenditures and income prices.

One aspect of setting up a VPS is making contact and arrangements for the ladies in the VPS women’s co-op to receive credit at a local micro-financing agency. This film does well in explaining how people in all countries can help finance our VPS business regardless of where the VPS is and regardless of where lenders are found.

We are all going to have to find out information about our local micro-financing agencies.

In the Kiva website there is a page that lists all the micro-financing companies Kiva works with. In Kenya (here), Uganda (here and here), and Ruwanda (here) there are the following agencies that have low risk ratings, which is good.

It would be a good idea for Rev. Wasike, Pastor Fred, and Gabriel to get in contact with these agencies and find out what their procedures and conditions are for your VPS women’s co-ops.

Please send me the information via email and I will document and publish the information in your VPS blogs.

This is a text written by Ron concerning market research from a project manager’s point of view.

The purpose of the Market Research is very simple. Can the likely usage of the facility support the costs of putting the facility in?

Consider the following questions:

Does your village have enough people to make providing the service viable?  

Clearly if the village only had 20 people it would probably never be enough but if your village has say 5oo it may well work, 5000 would be even better!

Will the VPS services be used often?

If you have 500 people and if each person only uses the services once a year, then that is not good usage. Yet, if they all made a call once a month it would probably work. Once a week would be even better. Obviously if we could have 5000 making a call every week we are in really great shape and will need to set up more Village Phone Salons.

Will the villagers use the other services such as phone charging often or to receive incoming calls messages?

 If they said they would, say twice a week, that would be very good practice.

We do not expect you to ask every person in the village but take a sample of say 100 people and ask the questions above. Then record the answers. Then scale the answer up to reflect the village population. (If there are 500 people in the village multiply your results by 5. If there are 600 people in the village multiply your results by 6, etc.)

Can you convince yourself that enough people will use the facility often enough to make it pay? If you can give us that information, it needs to factually based (a survey) and not just your best guess or desire, then we can determine if we should move to the next step. This should only take 2-3 days.

Why do this ???

Every business start-up has some risk associated with it. What we are trying to do, is to determine if we have a very good chance of it working in your village, or just a fair chance, or it is unlikely to work. Your phone ladies are going to have raise a loan to buy the equipment and we do not want them to do that if there is little chance of the venture succeeding. The business plan that will be required for them to get the loan has to convince the lenders that this business will be successful. That is the reasoning behind the research.

I hope this helps you get started. If you need more information let me know.

Ron.