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The bakery is cooking…

November 10, 2009 in Buffelshoek Trust, Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: , , , | 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.

hands2I 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!

Baking the Morning Away!

March 26, 2009 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 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.

Running a Marathon for Social Change

March 5, 2009 in Buffelshoek Trust, Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: , , , , , , | 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.

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Bakery on the Rise

February 26, 2009 in Uta Bakery Social Entrepreneurship | Tags: , , , , | 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: , , , , , , | 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.
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From the ED