After our successful tour of Mpumalanga, we headed to Gauteng Province where we stayed in Johannesburg for a day before proceeding to KwaZulu Natal Province where Durban is based.

Our first time to ever visit this beautiful coastal city for tapestry training. The first thing you notice when travelling from Johannesburg to Durban is a noticeable drop in altitude.

The purpose of our tour was a simple one:

Inspire Durbanites to start businesses that sells carpets!

The training has to be one of the best trainings we have ever done. A lot of people came with some coming from the Ministry of Education , NGO representatives, business women and men. Some drove from Eastern Cape and Pietermaritzburg. The top of the range cars should tell you about the seriousness that Durbanites attached to the training.

Our training centred on Tapestry Technical Skills Training, Entrepreneurship Training and a Shopping Mall Access to Markets Tour.

The technical training went on well with our trainer Tracy Mukasa leading the course which was well received. We introduced the entrepreneurship training on the first day and the lady from the Ministry of Education got curious, she asked for permission for her son to attend the session the following day. She did not want her son to miss out on the entrepreneurship message since he had his sights centred on the entrepreneurship journey. The following day we had Vuyani as part of the trainees attending the session.

Results : Technical Training

KwaZulu Province got tapestry training and they did not disappoint.

Results Entrepreneurship Training

Our training starts with promoting businesses by members so that they become networked and share the same vision. Our training output is to have a collective company formed. A company that helps members that cascades tapestry within the province,  a company that sells carpets and help to improve livelihoods of members and the community.

The good news is that plans are underway to form a company by group members, they are getting inspiration from Mpumalanga where a company is already in existence!

We also carried out a business tour at a nearby shopping mall and what are the results?

We managed to visit 4 shops within the shopping mall where everything went well except one shop where we were dismissed. The owner of the computer company was not interested in hearing our carpets story.   The best part of the tour has to be an Indian carpet shop owner who immediately wanted orders, price ranges and photos of complete samples. We were unfortunately not prepared enough as this was a market assessment exercise. The ladies got contact details and followed up with the requested documents. One of the ladies Nunu actually got an order from a Kaizer Chiefs fan!

Vote of Thanks

So we went to Durban and did not disappoint, how did the province react? We were crowned-initially taken aback because this was not expected! We got our first business award as a forum and it came in a traditional way in KwaZulu Natal. We got traditional gear to cap a fine outing for the forum in the coastal city! This was a trip with a difference and we will forever remember this special trip. We therefore would like to thank the wonderful people of Durban and we look forward to them cascading the training to millions of others in the province.

For more information on follow up trainings, do app +263774081808 or email victor@zbinworld.com

ZBIN is now officially a regional centre of women empowerment! This is not surprising because 60% of the ZBIN board is made up of women. The secretariat of ZBIN is made up of 99% women. Our membership is made up of 60% women and our programme beneficiaries to date are 90% women. It is not therefore surprising that most of our successful projects are designed by women for women!

We would therefore like to share with you some of our women aligned programmes to look forward to and they include:

Existing

Tapestry (Production of carpet rugs)-we introduced the programme in July 2017 and to date we have empowered more than 100 women in Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. We will be launching it in Namibia and South Africa in Mozambique in October. The programme is expected to empower more than 15,000 women by the end of 12 months helping them to form business ventures that makes and sells carp rugs. No better way to empower women than to let them use their intelligence and innovation! The programme is regional in focus and has started on a good note with an initial training of Regional Tapestry Champions being conducted at the Zimbabwe Business Ideas and Network Offices in Monavale, Harare. The programme combines technical skills with entrepreneurship skills –there is more emphasis on digital markets so that women can access markets beyond traditional marketing methods. An added bonus of the programme is free training to women in prison which seeks to rehabilitate women leaving prisons in Southern Africa.

Baking and Cooking Classes-The Baking and Cooking Community is the second largest ZBIN community with over a thousand members. Women share cooking and baking information especially baking for commercial purposes. Training workshops are conducted every month by individual group members and has worked well for the group.

Upcoming

Making Smoked Chicken and Sausages– A new programme still in our laboratory, it is meant to unlock business opportunities by empowering women to produce smoked chickens and sausages and also producing ham for sale. The programme is scheduled to start at the end of October and will be cascaded to the region using the same model we used for Tapestry. The programme has a target of 10,000 regional women reached in 12 months.

Detergents and Perfume Making-The programme to be launched in November and seeks to cascade our empowerment initiative to regional countries. There are existing initiatives running in the region but they are not marketed well and in many cases there are no central portals for information dissemination or learning-a key weakness we will be correcting in creating one central place for learning or information dissemination purposes.

So look forward to more exciting women empowerment initiatives in Southern Africa and join one of them. We have other programmes targeting the Christian Communities through business presentations and Youth Entrepreneurs Programme.