The Founder and President of Flare of Light Word. Hakim Belembaogo.
- After less than one year of collaboration with few partners, I am pleased to share in this first newsletter concrete results reached. With our Board of Directors Team we are proud to confirm that the project on Youth Entrepreneurship in Burkina Faso has been launched in Ouagadougou on October 14th 2019 funder the patronage of the Secretary General of the Prime Minister Office. The launch followed the signature of a Partnership’s Agreement on 2019 June 6th with Community Action for Integral Development (CAID), a local Non-Profit Organization. Activities planned this year have been fully implemented. The idea of the project is to equip and professionalize young Burkinabè so that they can make the most of the opportunities to succeed in setting up and achieving a good prosperity of their companies. This project also aims to increase young people’s capacity for creativity to promote self-employment and fight poverty. This engagement is based on a partnership that commit two non-profit partners that are engaged in the whole process on equal basis from the conception, to implementation, to monitoring-evaluation, to achieving sustainable results. Quality and ethics guide the project work which combine capacity building, continuous monitoring-evaluation and supportive way of doing including accompanying measures that prioritize coaching.
I cease this opportunity to wish all of our Directors, members, collaborators, mentors, volunteers, partners and readers a very happy end of 2019 year and a very fruitful 2020 new year.
Main activities
October 14th to 18th 2019 .
24 young people including 13 young women have been trained on entrepreneurship and marketing. All belong to difficult social and economic situations and aspire to engage in successful entrepreneurship in different sectors including: sewing, weaving of traditional loincloth, livestock, stock-guttering, sale of yogurt, information technology business and a garage.
The training program includes three modules of entrepreneurship (including the foundation of Entrepreneurship, the implementation of a business from start to finish, and four modules of Marketing. The program included theoretical and practical content as well as experience’ sharing with business people.
The evaluation exercise shows 100 % satisfaction on workshop and 100 % satisfaction on work methodology.
2019 November 18 to 21.
21 young people have been trained on information and communication technologies. The program included initiation and ability on Windows, Microsoft, Word, Excel and use of internet and social media. The workshop was guided by plenary sessions, practical exercise and group work. It concluded with the set-up of a networks among the group of young people to be led by two coaches from the group with the aim to promoting the young to young learning approach.
A Successful Story
Mr Inoussa Maiga, Journalist, Entrepreneur in agriculture business. He received award from international organizations.
The process I used is based on the following: *Perception, Evaluation and Realization* which are guided by a clear question or a specific center of interest. In order to overcome difficulties, it is key to be motivated, to fix clear objectives and to be open for continuous learning by doing. In case of failure it is very useful to take time and distance with the aim to evaluate and learn lessons to retry intelligently. Be accompanied by people who believe in you is rewarding.
The diagnosis Ì identified is that agriculture domain is suffering with very low compensation. There are a lot of challenges but also a lot of opportunities. Policy discussions on agriculture issues are made in rooms of conferences in the absence of the farmers. Therefore, it becomes necessary to use social media to make visible the needs and wishes of youth through the creation in 2014 of a first business called *Media prod*. The youth’ needs, ideas and initiatives become visible. However, the new challenge was the promotion of their initiatives and experiences on the ground which stimulated the need to create *Agribusiness tele* in 2016 and then tackle the issue of the marketing and distribution of their products at country and regional levels by creating *Agribusiness shop* in 2018. In two years, 200 products were promoted.
Among the lessons learned: the need to pay attention to the name of the business, to go through a strategic process by looking for progressive way of doing, to consider the market research, to identify and respond to the needs of people, to look for the opportunity that lends itself. While ensuring the quality of products and services being promoted it is extremely important to sell the image and not the product. To be able to select the same products the buyers will choose on the basis on the information they have on the Entrepreneur and its enterprise.
2020 future action
The 2020 year will be devoted to strengthening a close monitoring and evaluation mechanism to follow-up the achievement of expected results of the youth including accompanying young people in setting-up their business while exploring a mentorship student project in Philadelphia.
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CONTACT
Flare of Light,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
info@flareoflightnp.org
Tel +1 857 250 9188
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HAPPY 2020 NEW YEAR
