Part of the plan for our two-week trip to South Africa was to get out into the community to see the real country. The premise was that it is hard to advise women entrepreneurs when you don’t have an understanding of the environment in which they operate. I completely agree. When I found out that one of our field trips was to a high school, I wasn’t sure I got the connection. After being there, I get it now.
The school we visited was Matthew Goniwe Memorial High School in Khayelitsha, a large township in Cape Town. If you want to see it for yourself, go to YouTube as there are many touching videos there.
The first thing I learned is that the word “township” refers to an informal settlement comprising houses made out of cardboard scraps and whatever building materials can be found. Being there made coming home to my 5 bedroom, 2-story house feel…well…gluttonous.
Starting out our discussion, none of the kids knew where Washington, D.C. was though most had heard of the United States. It was clear, however, that they all knew what H.I.V. was and how to prevent it judging by the posters on the school walls. One gentleman was even sporting a rubber bracelet a la the “Livestrong” model that touted “safe sex = abstinence.” He told me that he had many girlfriends, but then showed me his bracelet. He wants to do accounting (which I think is their generic term for math) and I just bet he will.
The students are part of a South African program called Youth Enterprise Society (Y.E.S.). The goal of this program is to give the children skills they need to “become masters of their own destinies” by launching into entrepreneurship, furthering their education, or finding a corporate job (which isn’t so easy in a country that bears an unofficial 35% unemployment rate!). The day we visited they were working on their Life Skills module and exploring how to make good choices. They worked diligently on their projects with us looking on (and sometimes asking questions) and then, at the end, presented their work to the group.
I am not sure what I expected from these kids – raised in extreme poverty in a country where the other extreme - wealth - is right around the corner. Regardless of my expectations, they blew me away with their smiles and positive attitudes. They all wanted to get their photo taken with the kids in our party (see my daughter and fellow traveler Ciana Robinson in the picture) and showered us with hugs as we left. We have plans to find ways to work with them in the future and at some point, I’ll have to go back and pick up the piece of my heart that I left behind. Truly life changing.
Walking through the craft market in Cape Town, South Africa, some beautiful and unusual products caught my attention. There were coasters, note cards, crosses, and wood trays, all sporting hand-decorated USED TEA BAGS. I was even more intrigued when I read the sticker on the back of the products. The company was created to provide way for the people of the Mandela Park township outside of Cape Town in Hout Bay to get themselves out of the extreme poverty they currently live in. Talk about empowerment.
We were so moved by the quality of the products and what the company, T-Bag Designs, was doing that we wanted to visit their facility and see for ourselves.
Once there, we spoke at length with the woman who started it all: Jill Heyes. She moved to Hout Bay from the UK in 1996. A teacher, she was devastated to see the extreme poverty and worked with the local women to teach them crafts they could sell. The first couple of attempts failed, but they kept on looking for unique ideas that would be purchased for their beauty, not as a charity. In 2000, the tea bag concept was created and T-Bag Designs took off.
Building the company into a sustainable economic enterprise has been a challenge for Jill. With a huge heart but no business background, she has struggled to maintain the company’s profits due to the enormous overhead required to operate in her present location. She isn’t slowing down, though. Her vision is to eventually make or raise enough money to open a community center where the people of the township can go to learn new skills or just have a safe place for the kids to hang out.
She is also encouraging the women in the township to start their own businesses, grooming future women entpreneurs. She brings in an expert seamstress once a week to teach them how to sew high-quality goods they can sell alongside the T-Bag products. Everything she does is focused on teaching these people how to fish for themselves rather than providing hand outs - a philosophy we share.
When I asked her what she needed most, her answer was “increased sales.” So here is my request: check out their retail locations and do your holiday gift shopping there. Better yet, buy some for yourself and help me spread the word about these incredible products.
No doubt if you’ve read any news medium in the past few days, the story of Michael Phelps‘ incredible gold medal run at the Olympics in Beijing. In the U.S. especially, his 8 gold medals is already becoming a legend. In reading about his extreme focus and physical determination I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not have what it takes to reach that level of athleticism. It is just not in me. So what, then, can we mere mortals learn from his - and every other Olympic athlete’s - experiences and successes?
Linda Robertson in an article for the Miami Herald provides great insight:
“Five years ago, when Phelps first plotted his record, it seemed like a presumptuous, wacky fantasy. He was like a baseball player declaring he would break Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. He was like an astronaut declaring he would step foot on Mars.
Once in a while we need someone who doesn’t ask why, but why not?”
Why not? I used to have a sign posted on the walls of my office that said “How can we?” Tired of negative, “we can’t” attitudes, I was trying to change the conversations.
At a recent meeting with one of my FABULOUS South African mentees, she mentioned something they wanted to do by then brushed it off as absurd. We can’t. I of course asked the question: why not? She thought about it for a minute. Yes, why not? We proceeded to work through the question and found at the end that it was, indeed something they could consider doing. We even mapped out a plan of how to do it.
So my challenge to you this week, this month, this year is to listen to yourself. If and when you find yourself saying “We can’t” change the dialog. Think in terms of “How can we?” and see what opportunities emerge.
Damascus, MD - A group of Maryland-based women entrepreneurs recently returned from South Africa after completing three workshops in different regions of the country for women entrepreneurs there. Part of a program that began in April 2008 when 12 carefully-selected and diverse women were sent to the U.S. for a three week program, these workshops are designed to provide assistance and business development to both aspiring and current Information and Communications Technology (ICT) or ICT-enabled women owned businesses.
As a part of their two-week trip, the US-based women met with the original South African program participants, who now call themselves Femtrepreneurs, to hear how their experiences in the States have impacted their businesses and to receive additional mentoring from their U.S. counterparts. All of the women, without exception, have seen positive and dramatic changes in their businesses and expansion of their vision.
“It was phenomenal,” said Julie Lenzer Kirk, President and CEO of Path Forward International and the lead instructor for the group. “In just the few short months following the US portion of our program, these smart ladies have transformed themselves, their businesses, and are beginning to impact their communities as well.”
The program, which is coordinated by Meridian International Center, was created by a think tank of U.S. and S.A. women entrepreneurs and developers from a team of organizations represented in South Africa by Pretoria’s Maxum Business Incubator at the Innovation Hub and in the U.S. by Multi-national Development of Women in Technology (MDWIT) in Baltimore.
“This program is amazing” said Jill Sawers, Entrepreneurship manager of the Innovation Hub. “We hoped the women would do well, but we now see that a small investment in the entrepreneurship skills of the best and brightest women can impact hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in South Africa at an exponential rate.”
With funding from the U.S. State Department’s Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau and South Africa’s Small Enterprise Development Agency, the program builds on the success of the training by helping the women reach out to others as they launch a supportive international network of women technology entrepreneurs.
Renee Lewis, CEO and Founder of Pensare Group and a member of the U.S.-based leadership team, said that “based on our own real-world experience, we are helping women entrepreneurs to understand their power to leverage their own community networks for growth. This model catapults women into entrepreneurship faster and more successfully than more traditional models.”
The Femtrepreneurs are also independently providing internships, business, and mentoring to those younger and/or less fortunate women in their communities. Claudia Morrell, Executive Director of MDWIT, stated, “I have always believed that the best way to impact girls and rural women in developing countries is to empower the educated women there to individually reach back and pull their sisters up. It is universal that women want to help others - they just need the resources and knowledge to do it.”
Plans are underway to continue the expansion of the program, both within South Africa and to other regions of the world. “Meridian International Center is proud to be involved in this critically important and relevant program. We look forward to using our dedication to global engagement and our international network of contacts to further expand the impacts of this extraordinary initiative,” said Program Officer Rhianon DeLeeuw.
I am in Pretoria, South Africa on the beginning of my three-week tour across the country working with women entrepreneurs. In my first presentation on market positioning and elevator pitches, as I said a ‘thank you’ to the INCREDIBLE Femtrepreneurs, they gave me a big WooHoo! 12 success-driven high-tech women entrepreneurs waving their arms in the air in unison. It was awesome. Interestingly enough, there were around 60 other women in the audience who had never seen a WooHoo before. You could tell by the looks on their faces that they didn’t get it but were intrigued.
As the day progressed, the WooHoo’s started to spread. Women who had not been a part of the original WooHoo movement were now putting their hands in the air in celebrations big and small. By the end of the day, the CEO of The Innovation Hub, a male, incorporated a WooHoo into his closing address. Amazing as that seems, it didn’t stop there.
ADDENDUM: The fun did not stop there! In visiting Matthew Goniwe Memorial High School in Khayelitsha, a large township in Cape Town, we had the kids of the Youth Enterprise Society giving us THEIR WooHoo! Check out the video on YouTube.
Seems we’ve started something I pray will continue to spread for the good of all those who DON’T celebrate their lives…
The students are part of a South African program called Youth Enterprise Society (Y.E.S.). The goal of this program is to give the children skills they need to “become masters of their own destinies” by launching into entrepreneurship, furthering their education, or finding a corporate job (which isn’t so easy in a country that bears an unofficial 35% unemployment rate!). The day we visited they were working on their Life Skills module and exploring how to make good choices. They worked diligently on their projects with us looking on (and sometimes asking questions) and then, at the end, presented their work to the group.
No doubt if you’ve read any news medium in the past few days, the story of 
