Business Trainings

After weeks of preparation and organization, we have kicked off business skills training sessions here in Tanzania! WMI aims to give not just money, but advice and education on how to run a successful business. That way our borrowers are guaranteed to make their loan repayments easily, and put money aside for themselves.

Vicky, our Chairwoman for Buger village, reads stories of businesswomen who got into trouble because they did not keep good records. In one story, a woman accuses her husband of stealing from her because she forgot to write down her expenses, and then forgot she had spent the money. 

WMI has designed eight activities to teach eight different business skills. The staff of GWOCO, our Tanzanian CBO partner, trained the chairwomen of each loan group in the activities, and now the chairwomen run the trainings for the borrowers.

After the day-long training for chairwomen, one chairwoman told us, “I really enjoyed this training – we should do more!”

At a seminar for group chairwomen, the GWOCO Secretary, Eliminatha, leads an activity while the chairwomen take notes. 

The first activity is writing a household budget. Each woman comes to the meeting with her budget. The chairwoman and staff review the budgets with each woman and give advice. Then the chairwoman leads a discussion about the importance of household budgets, and how to do one properly. The borrowers discuss unnecessary expenses that they can cut. After we did this training in Tloma village, one borrower said, “I did not understand what a household budget was before, but I get it now.”

 

On the right, the Chairwoman of our groups in Buger village and our Treasurer review household budgets with the borrowers on the left. 

This month, the borrowers will do a recordkeeping activity. We try to emphasize the importance of records at all of our meetings. The recordkeeping activity includes examples of what can go wrong when businesswomen don’t keep good records.

Next month, we will do a teamwork and trust activity including trust circles, which the chairwomen got a kick out of at their training. After we go through all eight WMI activities, the chairwomen and staff here will come up with their own activities.

Do you have ideas for business skills trainings? Let us know in the comments!