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ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » Well this morning I woke up bright and early, with the sun shining over the hills of Rwanda.
Today I am setting off to carry out an evaluation of all of our tier one organisations (those exporting their products) with Joan Karanja, Regional Director of COFTA.
Yesterday was an exciting day for us, as we heard directly from the craft makers on the ups and downs of our training. Rwandans definitely say it how it is!
The first group we visited are based in Kigali. They are called BN Producers, an inspiring organisation that have only been around since 2006. Their main products include banana wine and mushrooms. The manager, Beatrice, took great pride in demonstrating (in detail!) how these products are grown and made, so now I feel like an expert in this area!
It was so interesting and very labour intensive. They take health and safety extremely seriously, sterilising all of their equipment regularly and measuring temperatures of their stock rooms three times per day.
We interviewed Beatrice to see what she had learnt from our training, what she has been able to take back to BN producers and put into action and what improvements we could make to our programme.
Some of the key changes that she has made as a result of the training include:
"We now do stock control, recording everything that is coming in and going out of our organisation.
"The main thing we learnt is the importance of financial management systems. I take the money to the bank instead of keeping it in the office, which I now know is not a safe way to do business.
"We have also improved our business plan including a budgeting section, which we did not have before. This meant we had no book keeping or way of seeing if we were making a profit so could not plan for the future."
The project also includes an environmental component. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa. With a population of well over 8 million there is a lot of pressure on the land.
All of our craft makers use natural resources to make their products and therefore rely heavily on the environment around them.
Beatrice stated:
"We need a healthy environment to make or grow our products so we have to look after it.
"During the training we learnt about afforestation; where to grow trees, which type are best to grow, to ensure we don't suffer from soil erosion.
"We now plan to run a tree planting day with our farmers, which will be good for them and the environment"
It's so exciting to start seeing the fruits of Shared Interest's labour, and with that we are off to the next organisation!
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