Today was an incredibly eventful day. We started the Community Health Worker program and the CHWs were so grateful for the program and how it had changed their lives and improved the health of their villages. They felt that the incidence of malaria was greatly reduced due to preventative efforts such as IBNS and eliminating standing water. Many of them were now employed at health posts and several were the head of the post. It really warmed me to see how happy and proud they were. We spent the afternoon teaching CPR, which was really tiring but went really well and was obviously completely new to the CHWs. We will repeat CPR practice daily to make sure they really know it well enough to teach it. We also have several sessions of physical therapy practicum planned, including using Pastor Joe Bleck, who is recovering from a broken leg three months ago.
While the health team was working with the community health workers the Lean Startup business training held two sessions.
Lean Startup (http://theleanstartup.com) helps people grow their businesses from idea to revenue in a short amount of time. Two of the key features of Lean Startup are Customer Interviews and the Business Model Canvas. The classes in Senegal will focus on these two tools.
The students in the first class are part of the church's women's skill center - a ministry that teaches them sewing and handcrafts like embroidery. In Senegal, people are rapidly changing from traditional clothing like these students are taught to sew to inexpensive, imported Chinese clothing. So, these students were split into three groups and asked to come up with a business idea. The idea needed to use their skills but not involve making clothes.
Once the groups had good ideas they were taught how to do customer interviews and sent off to do 10 interviews. Tomorrow, in their second session they will present the results of their interviews.
The second group came from a micro-finance project that gives women small loans to start businesses. Most of them have several years of business experience but are struggling to move out of poverty - they earn about $4 per day which they immediately spend on food for the day.
They were given the same instruction and homework.
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While the health team was working with the community health workers the Lean Startup business training held two sessions.
ReplyDeleteLean Startup (http://theleanstartup.com) helps people grow their businesses from idea to revenue in a short amount of time. Two of the key features of Lean Startup are Customer Interviews and the Business Model Canvas. The classes in Senegal will focus on these two tools.
The students in the first class are part of the church's women's skill center - a ministry that teaches them sewing and handcrafts like embroidery. In Senegal, people are rapidly changing from traditional clothing like these students are taught to sew to inexpensive, imported Chinese clothing. So, these students were split into three groups and asked to come up with a business idea. The idea needed to use their skills but not involve making clothes.
Once the groups had good ideas they were taught how to do customer interviews and sent off to do 10 interviews. Tomorrow, in their second session they will present the results of their interviews.
The second group came from a micro-finance project that gives women small loans to start businesses. Most of them have several years of business experience but are struggling to move out of poverty - they earn about $4 per day which they immediately spend on food for the day.
They were given the same instruction and homework.