One day, I travelled to another town and village and met a
group of women who supplement their income with some craft making, primarily
bags.
Another volunteer, Lawi, helped to estimate the cost of some
of the crafts to get a better idea of what they should sell each item for, if
at all. One bag which took 2 days to make was actually being sold at a loss
while smaller items of which many can be produced each day were producing a
small profit.
We were also asked about how they should market the products
so I helped them to come up with a brand name and got the started on deciding
on a logo. We settled on Bwaki (Pronounced Bwa-Chi) which was combination of
the village and group name. I also took various pictures for a website that I
will make for them later. I actually felt useful as they really did need a
western perspective to design a brand and logo that seemed attractive and
stylish rather than a charity case or souvenir craft.
We also looked at other projects they were considering such
as a brick making operation, water selling and leasing a boda-boda motorbike
taxi. This too was interesting as they were really set on the water operation
which looked the most profitable on paper but a few considerations I thought of
made them realize that it would have been very risky and likely to fail. So the
brick making business seems like the best idea due to entry barriers and growth
potential, and the next step will be to work out some kind of micro-finance loans
for them.
There was also talk of with the micro-finance company where
I suggested that they get together their records on past customers and I could
take a stab at building a credit risk model for them. It would be interesting
as one could use all sorts of information that I can’t back at home. Not just
gender but number of children, marital status, health, employment type, etc. They
have been running for 3 years so there should be enough data. It would probably
help with risk based pricing as the interest rates are around 30-35%!
On a side note, the women's village had a butcher with some really fresh meat that I could not help but photograph:
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