Harnessing the Power of Partnerships to Broaden AEP's Impact
AEP’s Development Director, Pamela O’Brien, provides an update on the most recent partnerships to benefit the youth and their families in Zambia.
Everyone knows the power of partnerships. However, in international development, when organizations come together, the intention is not to benefit each other, but to grow the impact of their work. In the African Education Program (AEP)’s case, this is to grow the impact of the opportunities we provide to the hundreds of Mwalli Leaders and their families. The impact has a ripple effect in the community as countless people reap the benefits of the partnership.
The first graduating class of AEP’s Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy Program Parent Training, Fall 2021.
There isn’t a single program under the AEP umbrella that does not benefit from a partnership. Take our Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy Program. AEP had a plan to create an opportunity for the youth in the program to access some type of business training before they graduated high school. However, this plan was put into action after learning that the families of the girls and boys in our program were not able to put food on their tables during the pandemic. Our team in Kafue listened to the needs of the community and we learned that the mothers of our girls and boys would benefit from learning how to run their businesses more profitably or how to begin a new one.
Thanks in part to a partial scholarship from Street Business School and the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation, two of AEP’s alumni, Benard, a University graduate who majored in Economics, and Violet, a high school graduate in her gap year before starting University, traveled to Uganda to be trained as Certified Lead Coaches by Street Business School and AEP became a Global Catalyst Partner. Street Business School is a global leader in entrepreneurship training and on a mission to end generational poverty by empowering women as entrepreneurs.
When the Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy Program Parent Training was announced to the local community, over 100 women showed up to the information session to learn more. The Parent Training consists of nine modules and lasts for a period of four months. To adequately teach the workshop and meet the needs of every participant, the women were divided into a manageable size of three cohorts with approximately 30 women in each. AEP is currently graduating from our second cohort and getting ready to start the third. A small grant from the Action Africa Giving Circle also supports our efforts to empower women entrepreneurs.
Spark Zambia meets with the women graduates from AEP’s Entrepreneurship Program Parent Training for the introductory Zoom session.
It was during the first cohort session that we learned that many of our women entrepreneurs needed basic financial literacy lessons and the women often had a difficult time coming up with creative solutions to their problems.
A partnership with Human Intelligence allowed us to create an additional module to the Street Business School training that helped these women think outside the box. Critical and creative thinking does not come easily for many people and Human Intelligence provided a way to teach the women entrepreneurs to use creativity in their business. Better creative thinking leads to better business decisions especially under constraint. The creativity curriculum was created to resonate and be culturally appropriate to our local community. The Entrepreneurship coaches learned how to be better listeners and were provided with tools to be able to respond effectively.
As part of the partnership with Street Business School, AEP will continue to coach and monitor the success of the women in the program for a period of two years. It will be interesting to learn what worked and what didn’t, as well as the amount of profits they increased, because they were empowered with knowledge.
Most recently, AEP has partnered with Join the Journey and their in-country partner, Spark Zambia, for a pilot project to provide microloans to ten of the women who have graduated from AEP’s first Parent Training. Many women in Sub-Saharan Africa have no formal education or vocation skills and most property is owned in their husband’s name, making it difficult for them to acquire a loan. But these women have the tremendous will to feed their families. To survive, they sell goods at the local markets – everything from dried fish to vegetables to recycled clothing.
The women entrepreneurs in the pilot project could not contain their joy as they received their first microloan.
Join the Journey and Spark Zambia provide business training, coaching, and capital to help these women entrepreneurs gain increased profits and a better shot at providing for their families. They assign personal coaches to walk alongside each woman who is participating in the pilot to learn intimate details of their business and how the loan may be best utilized. The knowledge that these women are gaining is proving to be priceless as they strive to become successful entrepreneurs who are breaking the cycle of generational poverty for their families.
What’s in store for 2022? AEP will roll out a youth component of the Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy Program. From our Young Learners who will learn the basics of financial literacy and the importance of saving, to our high school students and alumni. Every young person who enters the doors of our Learning and Leadership Center in Kafue will have access to insightful knowledge on how to start a business, how to budget and how to save.