E-Coaching and Support for Young Entrepreneurs

I joined the Association of African Entrepreneurs - Youth Employment Network (AAE-YEN) E-coaching program about 10 months ago (joined on June 2012) as E-Coach. Since then, I have mentored and still mentoring a total of 3 young entrepreneurs; I am to start with the 4th mentee next week. 

1.  Ahmed HATATA is my first mentee. He is from Egypt, a university student wishing to launch an IT company offering mobile phones' applications. Ahmed and I worked on his project for about 2 months, drafting a business model and a business plan. My way of working consist in explaining the Why and How to go with the mentee's requested support.  Unfortunately, after the last socio-political events in Egypt, Ahmed is no more reachable neither by E-mail, Skype, nor telephone. The AAE-YEN officials too tried by their own means to reach him to not avail.
    
2. Mohamed MATTAR is from Palestine, he is an ICT officer in an international organisation in the Palestinian occupied Territory. He is working to develop a venture named "PtDroid for Mobile development" that provides mobile applications. He needed help on business planning and products marketing. We are in the process of drafting these documents but since he always says he is so busy with his job, this process is very slow. I finally think that he needs to be motivated to really achieve his goal of launching a company. We communicate by E-mail and Skype.
    
3. Grace WANENE is a communication assistant with a Kenyan NGO, and she's from Kenya. She's working to launch a social venture named "The Farmer’s Circle" which is a social enterprise that aims to improve access to agricultural knowledge and information by young farmers through mobile phones and to carry out training in agriculture. We are drafting a business plan which is very specific to social enterprises. She also need help on the telecom technical aspect of her project. Grace seems to be very motivated and the process is going on smouthly. We communicate mainly by E-mail; but we mutually connected on Skype, and exchanged our telephone numbers too for future communications.
    
4.  Arnest SEBBUMBA is from Uganda and his project is also in the agriculture/agro-industry sector. He intend to produce agri products and sale them; then incoporate training activities to it. We are to start our mentoring relationship next week.

Basically, I received an online training at the AAE/YEN Mentoring University, on how to lead mentoring relations and the tips acquired are very usefull in facilitating this E-Coaching activity. Finally, I find it amazing to transfer knowledge and skills to people in need, especially to people who intend to become change agents.