GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 3, Day 1: Negotiation

What a lovely way to begin the week. This week we began off with learning about Negotiation skills. We all negotiate in one way or another in our day to day lives, be it in our families, places of work, at the market etc.

Introducing the Negotiation topic to #GWIM55 participants

But just how important is being prepared for a negotiation? especially when we know the stakes for a certain negotiation are high? forget about negotiating for the price of tomatoes to come down, or for the price of a pair of shoes to be reduced, am talking about a bigger enough deal where losing such a negotiation can have a greater impact on your country, business or family.

It is important to learn to be prepared for these kinds of big negotiations, always do your research first about where you are going to meet for such a negotiation, who are you meeting? prepare to take questions, prepare to answer questions, there is a lot that goes in the preparation process but it is worth looking at.

Many of the world's biggest negotiation deals are not done by the faint hearted, think about the peace missions, negotiating policy issues, something where the stakes are so high that everyone depends on it.

Sue, taking on the session, lovely session

I had a lot to learn from the session yesterday, and I will not fail to mention that Sue, Director, Leadership and Capacity building team at CEDPA did am amazing job.

It was so engaging and very beautifully delivered.

Now I know what to think about the next time I go in for those meetings with the different solar lantern distributors who seek partnerships with us... I know the stakes, I know the right questions to think about.

Damn, am getting better each day!

Performing some role-play in the negotiation class, Evelyn(left)

Read more »

International Night - A mix of cultures!

It was a mix of cultures at the International night that GWIM55 organised for us. I found out that the best time for one to feel patriotic about their Country and culture is when they are far away from their country.

We had a wonderful night portraying our different cultures, ethnics and backgrounds, everyone dressed in the most traditional way, Cameroun, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Angola all in one room.

Music from our respective countries playing, telling stories of our countries and what makes us unique,.. it was a fun night!

This is how I froze the moment :-)

Angola in the building! Isabel & Elizabeth

Here comes Uganda, Irene, Evelyn & Hellen

Meet the Masai ladies, Tanzania representing!

Cameroon in the house!

East African spirit, Tanzania meets Uganda ;-)

Nigeria joins in, with the rest..

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 2, Day 4 & 5: Product Development and Branding

We focused most of Thursday and Friday tackling products and how to market different products appropriately.

What makes a product like Nike or Mc Donald's one of the best brands in the market? The answer lies in how they develop their product. These companies / organisations take a lot of time researching their market space and knowing their customers! It is important to know who your customer is, and how to strategically reach out to them.

Nike is doing great in the sporting world, a lot of this success is driven by the fact that they studied the market and know who their target group is, and how to reach the market, same goes for Mc Donalds.

The best way for any Company to succeed is to study your customers, and knowing what they want, plus also studying the competition out there. You need to have a competitive advantage over all your competitors.

After knowing the right product and demographic, we then need to think about the different marketing strategies and Branding for our businesses.

The Marketing Mix - being able to make tactical decisions on the following; - Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
How one positions their product speaks a lot about them, we need to figure out who our audiences are and find out the best way to position our products, for instance some companies like to position themselves for the high class, and luxury - this should be depicted in the branding and product statements, so that when one reads about your statement, they are able to associate what you stand for in that simple statement.



Place (Distribution) - How do you intend to distribute your products? Do you intend to do distribution directly to your consumers, or you wish to go through an intermediary? Either choice has a reason why, so these have to be figured out and a right decision made.

Pricing - Very important part of the mix, when considering how you should price your products, a lot of things have to be put into consideration, the competition out there, how do they price their similar products?, Cost of production, how much does it cost to come up with the finished product?, positioning, where will you be selling your products?, Value? - Will the customers get value for their money? I mean all of us buy things because we expect to get the best value out of our purchases, so we need to consider all that.

Promotion - How do we promote our products out there, again different companies have different strategies depending on how big the company is, or what they offer, etc, so we looked at so many aspects in the promotion mix that one can consider to give their products a competitive edge.

All that was tackled in 2 days, and we ended the session with another exciting Learning synthesis called Jeopardy!

Once again, the group I was in won the challenge! OH it feels good to always be on the winning side - 2 weeks in a row, I have been in the winning team, more gifts for us, Chocolate (we love those) - and Bars of soap! :-)

Mollie Conell, taking us through the Jeopardy game!

Looking forward to week three of GWIM55.

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 2, Day 3: Field Trip - Nassarawa State

After spending many days in a classroom setting, it was time for us to go for a field trip, again I think CEDPA needs to be commended for a job well done in putting together one of the most interesting sessions I have been to.

We visited Nassarawa state which is a two and a half hour drive from Abuja. It was refreshing seeing the country side of Nigeria and the realities of people in the deep rural setting away from the city.

We visited three projects with the idea of studying their business models, how they started, what programs they have?, if they have any social aspects related to their kind of work, where they get funding, what impact they have? etc.

FAHCI

Our first project was FAHCI, which stands for Family Health Care Foundation which was started in 2002 by a lady, Mary Noktilik Ashenanye. Her background is in Public Health care, and she used this asset to start up this Family Health care foundation - remember what talked about assets?

This initiative is funded by USAID and is doing a great job in the great community of Nassarawa state, they have programs on reproductive health, Female Genital Mutilation, HIV/AIDs awareness, Micro-Credit programs, - to mention a few.

Listening to Mary speak about this project also helped us realize that she is a great Social entrepreneur, she saw a need in her society which was basically health facilities and awareness and she used her skills and assets to impact her society through FAHCI.

Mrs.Mary Noktilik Ashenanye, sharing with us about FAHCI programs

We learned a lot from this NGO at the end of the day.

WOMEN'S CASSAVA PROCESSING CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY

We visited another project the Women's Cassava processing co-operative society and we also learned a lot from their experiences, especially in terms of how they source for market for their cassava products, how they deal with competition, what machinery they use in the different processing, what they have learned throughout the years.

GWIM55 participants visiting the cassava processing plant

Cassava packed in sacks, at the Cassava processing plant

RICE PROCESSING

The last project we visited was the rice processing, similar questions were asked in each of these projects and we got a broader understanding of these three projects.

It was fun to get out of class and check out the other part of Nigeria, the rural part.

Rice in the big pot, before it is processed

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 2, Day 2: Business Planning and Market analysis

How do all the businesses we see today start? What makes one business totally successful and the others fail? All these are questions I often ask myself when am thinking about starting a business.

Why do people choose the businesses they have, and what makes their businesses great or not great? These were most of the questions that we answered Day 2, of week 2 at the GWIM55 session last week.

A lot of businesses that start up, do not live to see their first birthday... why is this the case? One of the participants said, only 6% of start -up businesses in Nigeria live to see the end of their first year, and I think this speaks to most of the other countries too.

Every Business needs to be planned thoroughly, one needs to go through the planning process and do a lot of research too, to determine if they should enter a certain business or not. We focused most of day 2 discussing these aspects.

Why do we need planning? I think most of us plan our days, or our lives, you have to live by some sort of schedule, not just waking up and starting your day without knowing specifically what you will be doing next. So in business, planning is also a great aspect.

It all starts at the Idea generation, what are some of the great business ideas you have? what assets do you have, that can help you get to those ideas? what opportunities exist? once we have all these figured out, then we move on to the most important thing which is the feasibility assessment. From our thousands of ideas, how do we get to choose the one idea that sets itself apart from the rest? There is a whole lot of process to determine this decision.



One final step of this process is the Business plan.. I think for a business to be very successful, we need to think about the business plan properly. Decision making time, how do you execute the one most important Idea that sets itself apart from the rest? But let us be honest, it is not the business plan that makes the business successful, it is the implementation of the business plans. How many well thought about business plans have ended up failing to work? many! So I think it starts with a highly dedicated team that knows what exactly they need out of the business and carrying the mission forward.

Market research is another aspect that has to be thought about definitely, you have to know what you are getting into in detail. What other companies, or people have done the same thing, what will make your business stand out, what will give you the competitive advantage, what approach do you want to take to achieve your targets, etc.

We did a lot of thinking about businesses and assets we have in this sessions, and how we can turn those assets into business opportunities. Your biggest asset might be the one you don't even expect can be the greatest.

For example, most people use their professions as potential business ventures, for instance if one is a doctor, they can use that knowledge to start up a community health care centre, or a Computer Scientist like me, can use that knowledge to start up an IT firm, or Hardware/ Software shop, etc.

A lot of reflecting in this session but the outcome was great, it got all of us thinking about what possible businesses we could start up using our assets, both tangible and intangible.

Again, Rich Fromer did a great job delivering this one!

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 2, Day 1: Social Entrepreneurship

When I first started with Solar Sister, I had no idea what a Social Enterprise meant, I certainly could not differentiate between Social Enterprises and Not- for profit Organisations, it was a little complicated for me given my background was in computers and geeky stuff!

But as I dug in and looked at our model and the way we did things, I got an understanding of what that meant, basically. It was the work of Katherine Lucey who I love to call my mentor rather than Boss, that helped me understand how this model really works.

This second week at the GWIM55, we focused in detail about Social Entrepreneurs, Social Entrepreneurship, and Social Enterprises. This was a very exciting topic for me and suddenly all the missing links were found. I love that I went into the workshop with an idea due to the nature of my work with Solar Sister and I found the session very interesting and engaging.

Rich Fromer, delivered the content for the week and I loved all the sessions.

What was most relevant to me that day was how Social Enterprises are suddenly on a rise, people suddenly feel a need to care more about the social aspects and economic opportunity of the less privileged and it is working tremendously. Even companies that are entirely for profit now have sections that address some social needs of the community.

One thing I picked most from the session was what motivates a Social Entrepreneur to start a Social Enterprise. Finding a social need in a community and then addressing that need using a practical, innovative, and sustainable approach to benefit the marginalized or poor.

Rich Fromer, going through the Social Entrepreneurship model

With Social Enterprises, the approach certainly should be thought through in everything you do, however good the idea is, or the need, one needs to think profoundly about the approach they have to take to address the social need in the most innovative way, plus measuring the impact an idea has to the community.

That is why every time in the session I would reflect on our work as Solar Sister and why our model fits and works to help the communities we empower. The approach definitely works and we can measure our impact by the number of families we have reached through our solar lamps. - Approach and Product have to be at the core.
Katherine must have thought this through, and I believe she is an amazing Social Entrepreneur.

Most of us in the session had never even realized we were Social entrepreneurs, but we had our eyes opened and loved the session.

Totally loved that session, mostly because, it spoke about what I needed to understand the most and now I have a greater appreciation of my work.

Great way to start week two!

Read more »

The Zuma Rock

Work without play made, who? Jack a dull boy? No this time, Evelyn a dull girl. But no, we took time off the busy workshop schedule and went for sight seeing.

Nigeria is a beautiful country, I must admit, when you are this side of the world, [read East Africa] we hear a lot of stories about West African countries and most of them not so impressive... but I totally have a different view being on ground.

The people are good and friendly, well - at least the ones I have had contact with at the hotel and am enjoying my stay in this beautiful country.

The Zuma Rock is a large monolith located in Niger State, Nigeria. It is just north of Nigeria's capital Abuja, along the main road from Abuja to Kaduna, and is sometimes referred to as "Gateway to Abuja."
It is depicted on the 100 naira bill. Zuma Rock is 725 meters above its surroundings.

It is amazing how nature works, this is really a wonder from God, the rock seen from the front is cut out to be like a face of someone, and it has 'waters' dropping down it's face - looks like tears or sweat, and no one cut it out to be that way, it just happened, NATURE!

From behind, it is curved like an elephant...

The tour guide told us a few of the stories surrounding the rock, it is believed that some people think or believe it is a god and they go there to worship it. There are surrounding little rocks that are believed to be "sons" and "daughters" of Zuma?

What was interesting to note was that, in the neighborhood, just a few miles away from the rock, are houses that the government built but it is believed that people refused to enter the houses... I wished I stayed here so that I can just go and enter the houses..lol!

But seriously, I love nature, I love to see such things that can not be explained by man, but are just there in wonderment.

If you are planning a trip to Abuja, or Nigeria, be sure to check out the Zuma rock.

Pictures speak louder than words...

Zuma rock, seen from behind

Side view of the Rock

Took this picture on the road side, quite far away from the rock

That's the front view of the rock

Pointing at the rock

Part of the GWIM55 team, excited at this great adventure

GWIM55 team photo

Another team picture

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 1, Day 5: Women, Tools and Technology

Our last day of the week was a great one and it touched on three very important aspects in my life, Women, tools and technology. Those three words consist of the commonly used words in my vocabulary.

The focus was on the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)'s research on the topic. The ICRW does an amazing work in looking at ways in which tools and technology have impacted the lives of women.

And through their research they have come out with models that they feel work in most of the cases.


We find out that in most times, women are eliminated in the design of new technology, people want to come up with new and innovative technologies but they do not involve the women in the design process, yet at the end of the day, the women are the recipients of such technology. We need to involve more women in these processes.

So we looked at ICRW's technology lifecycle and did case studies of some projects, and yes Solar Sister was one of the projects we did a case study on, and tried to see which of the steps in the technology lifecycle did we follow through. - Must I brag again, that only three projects were chosen for the case study and we made the cut!

ICRW Techology Lifecycle

The afternoon session was the most interesting one, we had a learning synthesis of all the things we did in one week in form of a 'scavenger hunt'. If you watch the Amazing Race, this is typically one version of the amazing race. We had different groups set up and given clues that take us to different locations, once you get your clue right, you find a person who gives you a question (s) about a certain topic learned in the week, once you answer that correctly, you get to the next clue.
That was a fun task, and yes, - my team won the race!

Team pose, my team after winning.

Winning pose, chocolate for us!

Lovely way to end the week - inspired and energized - Next week will be fun, we kick it off with Social Entrepreneurship - yea now, that speaks directly to me, plus I share my presentation about the Solar Sister Micro-Consignment Model on Tuesday next week. Fun times!

You have to read the next post, - touring Nigeria....

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 1, Day 3 & 4: Leadership and Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Leadership is one topic that touches most people who are in authority in one way or the other.

The list of great leaders, African leaders to be specific is large and there are a lot of people out there who have done amazing things to inspire others through their work and leadership skills.

Day 3 reflected more about Leadership, who a good leader is and the traits of being a good leader. There are a lot of things we normally take for granted as leaders and as such neglect the important aspects of our work that would have made our organisations / businesses much better.

A leader is not only a title, a leader carries a lot more weight than just sitting in an office and commanding people on what to do. It takes knowing your team and being a part of it, motivating members, complimenting them, accepting feedback et el.



My best part was the Emotional Intelligence part.

Take time to reflect in your place of work, country etc, look at some of the great minds in business, or other companies, most of the people that make top managers are not the smartest kids in class... the guys whose IQ is high up there!

I remember in school we thought these guys had it all, but what happens to them when we throw them in a real life scenario? Most of the business heads, CEOs, etc are the people who were actually average students in class! The ones who passed, maybe not excelled but did just enough, and in some circumstances, actually most cases, some of these great minds in businesses did not even make it to high school!

So what is it about them that gives them the edge? That is when Emotional Intelligence comes in.
Research has found out that IQ, or being only intelligent is not good enough, you need to know how to deal with people and their emotions, and once you have these, then we see people excelling in different businesses, work etc.

I loved this quote "We are being judged by a new yardstick/criteria, not just how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also how well we handle ourselves and each other". - Daniel Goleman, PH.D - Working with Emotional Intelligence.



I learned a lot from this beautiful concept and will research it deeper. Once we are able to know how to deal with people's emotions in our homes, places of work, there is a lot that we accomplish and it definitely gives us an edge in our working environments.

Lovely 2 days of Leadership, and Emotional Intelligence!

Read more »

GWIM55 - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 1, Day 2: Learning Style Inventory (LSI)

We all learn in different ways. We all have preferences of how we tackle new experiences. Understanding the learning cycle, and how to go through it, can help explain how you deal with problems, people and new situations.
And understanding the differences between yourself and others can give insights into your personal and professional relationships.

Day 2, we focused on how we learn! One of the things that CEDPA focuses on as they deliver their workshops is to help each of the participants realize the best way they learn. We all learn differently, some are fast learners, others are slow, others prefer to observe, others prefer to actively participate, some prefer to analyse first, yet some prefer to jump in and just do it! Yes many different ways.

We did an interesting exercise that was meant to determine how each one of us learns. It was a very interesting exercise.
I always knew I was a very practical person from when I was young, I love to jump in and make things move.

I remember I taught myself Linux and then went to school to learn more about it, yes am typically that kind of person. Sit down, figure out how things are done on my own and then later patch up the hanging bits.

Who remembers the quick and dirty.. in computing, Linux! When any new software was to be installed on a machine, you had a choice to either read the manual, but in most instances, the quick and dirty worked, which basically involved about 3 commands, ./configure, make, make install... [yea- in my learning, I was usually like that].

We did a quiz, then mapped a few things on a graph, and pie chart, and each one of us ended up in a Cycle that represents how we learn best. This doesn't mean that when you are comfortable learning a certain way, then you can't learn in another way - it simply means where we landed in the cycle is where we are most comfortable.

And the 4 cycles included: 1. Accommodating -- Active Experimentation, 2. Diverging -- Concrete Experience, 3. Converging -- Reflective Observation 4. Assimilating -- Abstract Conceptualization.

From the description of myself above, you can guess where I landed, in the Accommodating Style - where basically people with this learning style have the ability to learn primarily from 'hands-on'experience. It is also important to note that most CEOs, EDs, and bosses lie in this group.

Where each participant ended up after the exercise

I learned a lot about the different learning styles too, and how each compliment each other. We can't do without the other, the 'doers', need the guys who look at things in different perspectives and come up with different ideas, the Diverging group, and then, we also need the guys who do the research, and analysis, who look at the bigger picture, but then again we need the guys who will make decisions for us from the many ideas - converging style, and then of course the guys who take action, the Accommodating people.

Every business as it starts up goes through all these phases, and it is important to learn to accommodate the different ways people learn.

Then we later looked at CEDPA's Integrated Model of Women's Economic participation, in the different sectors of Education, Health, Environment/Agriculture, Social/Cultural, Politics & Government, Human Rights/ Law.
We dissected this, and went into details of how Women and Girls are affected in the different fields and how their involvement in the re-designing process would change the world!

Nancy Tian, taking us through an exercise about the Learning Style Inventory (LSI)

Fun fun day two!

Read more »

Global Women in Management Workshop (GWIM55) - Abuja, Nigeria - Week 1, Day 1: Who are you?

Today was the start of a fun and exciting one month long workshop organized by CEDPA and sponsored by Exxonmobil.

What we did on day one was very exciting to say the least. All I can say is I can not wait for the remaining of the program to kick off as the week goes by.

Today was a special day of getting to know each other, participants, Instructors, Organisers, etc. So I decided to name the blogpost, Who are you?
I loved so much the nature of presentation that CEDPA is using to deliver the entire workshop so far, and am learning a thing or two from their format.

We had an innovative way of introducing ourselves, not the traditional, "Stand up and tell us your name" style. Each participant had key interview questions they were meant to ask their neighbor, in a form of conversation, and getting to know each other, some of the key things we asked were, our strengths, greatest achievements, what drives us to do what we do each day et el.
So after this exercise, we had a brief presentation where each one of us had to go and talk to the rest about their neighbor.


And I really have to brag here, this is my moment to shine, #bragright. I know I have many strong points but one of them is that once I stand before people and speak, I want people to remember me, I make sure I leave a mark so that people can talk about me.

Evelyn, giving an intro of her neighbour & friend, Caroline Linus Aboh

And yes, I did it again, I presented with so much tenacity, was audible enough and I could see heads turn when I left the stage. True story! Matter of fact, after all the presentations made today, I mean the introductions, the only project that was referred to in the entire session today was Solar Sister project.

Every example given about a project mentioned Solar Sister in it! Yes and that is how I knew I left a mark.

So we had a beautiful tree made out of all our fruits and what we want to achieve / ambitions [ as roots] and it was amazing watching it come together. When Women move forward, the world moves with them.


We had participant teams set up today, and we will be responsible for different tasks as the weeks go by, and what I love already about the set up of the workshop is the ability to engage us in every step of the way. Am going to be a kick ass woman leader after this workshop, I mean I feel it already.

So with a couple of exercises that we did and meeting many incredible women today, I feel more inspired that women really run the world. Am seated in the company of CEOs, PHD holders, Executive Directors, and Evelyn! But watch this space, this girl has a whole lot of good stuff ahead of her.


So the day ended in style, The girls threw a belated Birthday party for me at the poolside. I mean these girls know how to party, one has a grand child nearly my age, but they were able to rock them bikinis and take me for a pool party! So we crown day one! Tomorrow, serious business! I will report how that goes.

GWIM55 Workshop goals & objectives

Read more »