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Updates from the Microfinance Project
February 26, 2010 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: community center, microfinance, social entrepreneurship, South Africa | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
Gurrion and Veltah, the Project’s microloan Recipients, are both enrolled in SEDA’s pilot Mentoring Programme. They will be mentored by a business adviser from a private company that is contracted by SEDA for two months. They will meet with Themba Manzini, the business adviser, this coming Wednesday to begin their mentoring sessions. The Project Committee will continue to monitor and support their new businesses, the Uta Egg Farm and the Uta Chicken Project, over the entire repayment period, while Themba will help them with the business side of things. I think that the Project’s partnership with SEDA will help to ensure its sustainability in a unique way.
The Project’s Microfinance Program is for the Uta community run by community members, but SEDA’s resources and expertise will help both the Project Recipients and the Project Committee as the Program develops. SEDA has agreed to enroll all future Project microloan Recipients into Mentoring Programmes, and it envisions the Committee ultimately giving them up to five people at a time to mentor in starting small enterprises. The Recipient’s first installment payment is due at the end of March, and because of the popularity of chicken and eggs in Uta, I think that these two businesses will be successful. I will be excited to see what new ideas come up when the Committee accepts applications for its second round of microloans, and I will also be excited to see the evolution of the Project Committee. My dream is that the Project Committee will become a business itself, paying the Committee members salaries to do the hard work that they now do as volunteers. I think that this is a real possibility, and SEDA has already agreed to mentor the Committee in the process of becoming its own business in the future. We will see how this first round goes, but the sky’s the limit!
Eggs, Chicken and Microfinance
February 1, 2010 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: africa, community organizing, microenterprise, microfinance, social entrepreneurship, South Africa | by ThinkImpact | 1 comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
Gurrion Mabunda and Veltah Mathebula will be receiving the Project’s first two microloans this week! Gurrion is starting his business, the Utah Egg Farm, and Veltah is re-establishing her business, the Chicken Project. They will both meet with a SEDA business adviser on 1 February to go over their business plans with her, and to do more intensive financial planning in terms of the loan amount they will be receiving (R5000). In becoming clients of SEDA, these two businesses will have a much better chance of succeeding and repaying the loan money to the Project because of SEDA’s resources and experience in starting small enterprises in rural areas. The Center Committee has decided to give them a grace period of one week before they will start checking the businesses records to ensure that stock is being bought, bookkeeping is happening, marketing research is occurring, etc., and they will give them a one- month grace period before the first installment payment is due. The Center Commitee designed the system so that the Recipients deposit repayment money into the Project Account on their own schedules and then bring deposit slips to the monthly Center Meetings in order to show that the total installment has been paid.
I will be visiting the businesses with different Committee members over the next three weeks to observe the Recipients’ progress and to monitor the Center Committee’s monitoring process. I can’t believe that my time in South Africa is so quickly coming to an end, but I know that I will be busy right up until the very last minute!
The bakery is cooking…
November 10, 2009 in Buffelshoek Trust, Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: bakery, development, social entrepreneurship, South Africa | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
The Uta Bakery is in full swing as the season is changing from spring to summer in South Africa. We are baking 200-300 loaves of bread per day, and as the recent Think Impact Global Development Ambassadors can confirm, the bread is delicious! Everyday, the bakery staff, Cedrick, Thomas, Nature, and Solani, start the mixer at 4 a.m., and they bake until the smell of fresh bread fills the air. The focus of my project has shifted to the microfinance initiative that seeks to bring social entrepreneurship to the village of Uta.
I am currently working with a group of local volunteers, including bakery staff members, who have formed a committee to design and implement a microloan program. The committee will construct an application process for interested entrepreneurs, and based on the committee’s selection process, small loans will eventually be granted and then recipients will be supported by the committee as they pay back the loans to the microfinance group. The committee has a meeting today, after which I will post an update on our progress!
World Hunger – As clear a picture as ever
May 8, 2009 in Saul Says..., Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: 2009, advocacy, africa, development, international development, nutrition, poverty | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
It doesn’t get any more straightforward than this: Poverty in Africa is still extremely high. The Bread for the World Institute has published a remarkable map of the world disclosing what percentage of people living in every country around the world is surviving on less than $1.25 per day.
To get some perspective on this, I reflected on my morning. The first thing I did today (other than shower with ample clean water, brush my teeth with high quality toothpaste, and throw on some clothes that costs more than I’d like to admit), was walk to the store and by a cup of coffee for $1.60. There goes that alotment for the day. That cup of coffee. Out of reach for much of Africa as visible on this site. There remains much work to be done.
Baking the Morning Away!
March 26, 2009 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: bakery, community development, community organizing, health, manyeleti, poverty, rural, social entrepreneurship, South Africa | by ThinkImpact | 1 comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
I have been working at a small bakery here in Atlanta for the past few months, and it has been a good learning experience for me. It has prepared me for early mornings and other important parts of bakery-life. Although working at the register has not given me a lot of exposure to the bread-making part of this work, I have gotten good exposure to the daily grind that is running a successful small business. I woke up today to go to work (as I now know, bakeries have to start the day before the sun rises), and I realized that June is just around the corner! I could not be more excited about the project, which is slowly but surely coming to life! I wanted to reflect on my time working at this bakery, and I have come up with five key lessons that I have learned:
(1) Quality is everything at a bakery.
(2) You have to wake up early, no excuses.
(3) Appearance counts, the bread needs to look good and the bakery too.
(4) You must be consistent- when the bakery is open, bread must be available.
(5) People like sweet treats. Cookies are big sellers.
It’s Green Outside and Things are Lookin’ Good
March 19, 2009 in Buffelshoek Trust, Saul Says..., Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: bakery project, buffelshoed trust, clinic, community organizing, gda, global development ambassadors, health, hiv/aids, South Africa | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
I got out to South Africa on Saturday with our team of Global Development Ambassadors. It’s been a whirlwind of exciting development and progress. The group arrive to the Uta community on Sunday where we saw a remarkable new structure, complete with a beautiful red roof at the site of the new health clinic that will serve 50,000 people! The clinic, built by our partner The Buffelshoek Trust, who is working closely with the Mpumalanga, Department of Health, have devised a plan that will ensure at least 160 people every day (likely much more!) will receive high quality medical care for their HIV/AIDS, bone fractures, diabetes and other need. Accompanied by the clinic will be an outstanding outreach program to educate the community on this new resource that they have been dreaming of for decades. Read the rest of this entry »
Running a Marathon for Social Change
March 5, 2009 in Buffelshoek Trust, Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: bakery, causes, community based, development, fundraising, marathon, nutrition | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
Team Uta is in training! A group of six girls, Sonia Rao, Emma Shapiro, Adele Williams, Maddie Kane, Emily Martin and me, will be running in the Georgia ING Half-Marathon on March 29th to raise funds for the Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship project! The team has set the fundraising goal of each raising $10 per mile that we run, and as a group, we have already raised $480! There is still a long ways to go towards finishing all 13 miles fully-funded, so each team member has asked her friends and family to help her reach the finish line.
Bakery on the Rise
February 26, 2009 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: bakery, microenterprise, microfinance, nutrition, social entrepreneurship | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
I’m currently working on a couple of fundraising projects. They are all very exciting, especially the Uta Bakery Team running in the Georgia Half-Marathon on March 29th. There are six girls on the team, and each girl has a personal fundraising goal of $10 per mile. We already have two girls who have donors that have agreed to match their total amount raised, and we can’t wait to run for social entrepreneurship! If you’d like to sponsor a mile or two (or even someone’s entire thirteen!), please donate on the bakery page and help us run for a purpose next month! The project is also consistently raising additional funds each month with the Spare Change for Social Change campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Early Lessons as a Fellow Starting a Project
December 19, 2008 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: bakery, fundraising, health, nutrition, social entrepreneurship, South Africa, uta | by ThinkImpact | Leave a comment
Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow
The past two months have been full of challenges and rewards for the Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship Project. I have focused primarily on fundraising during the fall and winter, and I am very excited about the research and design part of the program to which I will dedicate the majority of my time in the spring.
Read the rest of this entry »
