By Ashley Martin | LI intern
Dear committed Leadership Initiatives donor,
Students that attended the International Business Summit this year at Georgetown University, worked with a series of professionals and mentors to solve problems facing small, developing businesses in Nigeria. One team, made up of 5 students, worked collaboratively throughout the week to help a catering business owned by a young woman named Rabi. Rabi is 20 years old and graduated from secondary school just three years ago. She works at her catering business six days a week to provide for her four siblings and both her parents.
The team of students decided to focus on 3 main problems: Financial management, new recipes, and advertising. Their first focus was creating a way for Rabi to keep track of her income, expenses, and profits. The team created 3 spreadsheets to keep track of her financials, where each spreadsheet would target a specific financial category. For example, there was one spreadsheet for all the money Rabi spends, another for all the money she makes from selling pastries and the last spreadsheet was for profits. All these sheets would be printed out and put in a binder for organization. The next problem that the team addressed was finding new recipes for Rabi to add to her menu. The group of students created both digital copies and hard copies of the recipes and techniques , therefore Rabi would have easy access to them. The team even found video tutorials to ensure Rabi understood each step of the recipes. The last problem the team solved was they needed a method to attract new customers as all Rabi’s current customers only knew of her business by “word of mouth”. The team decided to design business cards and a banner to catch the eye of customers as they walk by. One of the team's most creative idea was to create a customer feedback survey, where people who buy pastries from Rabi would volunteer to fill out a form asking about the service and in return they would acquire a free pastry.
Rabi works hard everyday in order to support her large family. Rabi learned how to cook from her older sisters when she was younger and as a result, Rabi would like to help train young women in her community to cook in the future. Like all of Leadership Initiatives’ business owners, Rabi is incredibly grateful for this experience and is excited for the changes that will be implemented in her business. Thank you for your charitable donations as they have contributed to the progress the LI Team and business partners have made so far. If you would like to read more stories like Rabi’s, check them out at liempower.org.
Sincerely,
The Leadership Initiative Team
By Marshall Bailly | Executive Director of Leadership Initiatives
By Marshall Bailly | Director of Operations
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