The Plan

My trip is divided into two sections really. For the first 6 weeks I'll be volunteering in rural Western Kenya. After that, I'll be headed south on Safari for a month. Let me start there because it is quick to pass on the details:

Safari
What: Safari. I just told you that. Are you reading any of this?
Where: Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa
With: Acacia Africa
Tour Website: http://www.acacia-africa.com/HolidayDetails.aspx?tc=SEAA32&ProductID=7


Volunteering
What: Micro-enterprise Development
What?!: The idea started in Bangladesh by a guy called Mohammad Yannis (see he book Banker to the Poor for more), who won the nobel peace prize for starting a bank that would lend money to poor people. Basically, groups of the poorest people, the "extreme poor" (those living on less than $1 a day), obviously have no means of collateral because they cannot accumulate wealth. All of their income goes to surviving, and there isn't even enough for that. So they go to this special bank and are given a loan (typically under $2500, and mostly far smaller than that). They are then free from the oppressive interest rates and demands of the moneylenders and can start their own businesses. They form groups so that each member is accountable for the repayment of the loan (and repayment is an amazing 99%, higher even than secured loans in First World countries) and so that each member also has help with their own business and can in turn help with the businesses of the other members to ensure that all the businesses benefit from the combined efforts and skills of the entire group. And slowly but surely, often taking out additional bigger loans, these people are able to build enough wealth to buy food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care for them and their families, and eventually to get savings and future re-investment capital.

And this is where I come in. The charity, Volunteer Kenya (http://www.volunteerkenya.org/) or ICODEI as it is known in Kenya (pronounced Eco-day), takes on volunteers to provide development assistance, which means that I'll be helping the groups to develop their businesses, their projects, their ideas, and their knowledge. The two biggest components of this are business seminars and site visits.

For the seminars, I travel to the areas where there are groups who have set up or are looking to set up micro-enterprises and I provide free 6-hr business skills training seminars to them. These cover the basic business topics: income, expenses, profit, loss, costing, pricing, basic accounting and then on to more advanced topics such as business planning, use of profits, cost/benefit analysis, marketing and sales, competition, customer service, and so on.

The site visits are basically consultations where I will go to the enterprises set up by groups in areas nearby. Typical operations are honey farming, vegitable or livestock farming, matatus (bicycle taxis), baking, etc. During the consultations, I sit down with each group and go over their bookkeeping and review the revenues and expenses, discuss opportunities for attaining or improving profitability, and help groups to address areas of weakness in the planning and execution.

By the way, I should mention, despite an MBA with a focus on Entrepreneurship and my previous experience teaching, I'm completely unqualified to do this. I know I'll be learning a lot more than my students and I'm both excited and nervous.

Where: I'll be living on a farm in a small village called Kabula in Western Kenya. It is small enough that it doesn't even show on Google maps, but the nearby town Bungoma, can be seen near Kenya's western boarder with Uganda, just south of the highway from Nairobi to Kampala and about 1.5 hours north of Lake Victoria.


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The farm has all the modern amenities, including flush toilets (really, this is a rarety I'm told), laundry (by which I mean a bucket to heat some water in) and a yes, even a shower (by which I also mean a bucket to heat some water in, but with the added bonus of a second bucket with which to pour water on myself while I stand in the first bucket).

Don't worry, I had to use up my vacation time to go so for part of this I'm still technically getting paid. Uh...yeah. Anyone want to come visit? Don't worry. The yellow fever shots don't have THAT many side effects. No?