Koinoina Foundation

Great news: 20 more women have joined the Beacon Program! Through the Beacon Program, unemployed women start small businesses selling the K-Light solar lantern in their communities. The women work together in a cooperative to run the business, and the addition of this new group marks the opening of the second branch of Ingenzi za Rwezamenyo Cooperative (the first branch being in districts of Kigali).

Last week, these 20 women received business training to enable them to run their business effectively. Koinonia Foundation benefitted from a University of Michigan MBA student named Dale, who was working on the K-Light project in Rwanda. He agreed to set aside a portion of his time to impart some Ross School of Business knowledge to the women in the program. (For future training, we will be using Rwandese business students.)

One of the things Dale did during the training was to get all the women together and teach them some marketing strategies. Then he broke them up into groups for a mock competition to pitch a marketing plan. The women had some great suggestions on how to expand the business and on additional products they could sell. I suspect that some of the ideas they had will become part of their business!

After the 5-day training program, each of the women received a grant of 6 K-Lights as the capital to begin the business. Good luck to the women of the Ingenzi za Rwezamenyo – Ngoma Branch. We’re looking forward to supporting you on this journey.

Here are a few snapshots from the experience. Thanks to Dale, for sharing his knowledge and his pictures. Enjoy your chicken!

Koinonia Foundation has a YouTube channel! We’ve been busily uploading our videos and plan to upload some more soon. These FlipCams we’ve got have proven to be very popular – and very useful. We’re even filming some of our informational video on them. Check out a video we uploaded of the training session last month in Kigali for the Beacon Program. It’s after the jump!

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Hi everyone,

My name is Nicole. I’m the intern. I’m a senior at Grand Valley State University and have been very lucky to participate in this internship program with the Koinonia Foundation this semester.  A large portion of my internship involved creating business lessons to teach to the existing, and also the new, Beacon Women. As these women were starting up their own small business, they desired to have more basic business knowledge in areas such as accounting, marketing, project development, and inventory management.

Traveling to Rwanda was my first time going abroad. I was extremely excited to visit another country, even for the 15 hour plane ride.  After getting delayed in Brussles for a day (which turned out to be a lot of fun), we finally arrived in Kigali.

The city was completely different than I had anticipated.  I had expected much less developed infrastructure and fewer modern vehicles and businesses.  Although, this is only really true in Kigali, because I experienced a much different scenery and experience in Rwamagana and Akagera.

But back to the lesson plans!  I was able to train the women over a four day period in five-hour increments.  When I first heard that I would be training the women in five-hour sessions, I was extremely nervous. The thought of advising these women in the subject of business, when I don’t even a word of Kinyarwandan, was very nerve-wracking.

Needless to say, I had nothing to worry about.  The Beacon women were so welcoming and eager to learn from day one, and my translator Jerome was a big help also.  My favorite lesson to teach to the women was accounting.  They caught onto concepts and terms that took me an entire semester to learn in a two-day period.  It was a breath of fresh air to have the ladies come up to the board to volunteer their answers and thoughts so freely and honestly – something I don’t witness a lot in my own classes in college.

Since I only had four days with the women, Koinonia is looking for a Rwandese business student to continue increasing the women’s business knowledge and improve their English speaking skills.  Overall, I feel so blessed to have met these women. They are passionate about their business and their families, and they are taking steps to make sure both will be healthy and successful in the future.

I feel this blog is going on a little long now, so I will tell you all more about my trip in the near future!

Nicole

P.S.  If you are ever in Kigali, you should stop by the Beacon Womens store and buy a K-Light…or maybe some clothes!

It’s been a week since Nicole and I returned from Rwanda to Michigan. (more…)

What a great way to celebrate International Women’s Day – empowering women through business education.  (more…)

Nicole and I made it to Rwanda a day late, thanks to “technical difficulties” that grounded our plane in Brussels on Tuesday.

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From Koinonia Foundation president, Andrew Williams. Andy is currently in Rwanda through early April: (more…)

To help the Beacon Program women increase their presence in the Nyarugenge district, the women are getting shirts advertising their cooperative. (more…)

Beacon Program developments can be found here: (more…)

The Koinonia Foundation has awarded the first micro-grant to the women of the Beacon Program. Each of the 10 women of the Ingenzi K-Light Cooperative has been awarded 6 K-Lights as the capital with which to start her small business. (more…)