Meet SBS Workshop Graduate Beatrice – ending poverty through entrepreneurial training
Ending Poverty Through Entrepreneurial Training: We would like to introduce you to Beatrice. She is a mother of six and a passionate business owner. Before Beatrice joined Street Business School (SBS), she ran a poultry business, raised pigs, and sold snacks. Despite her entrepreneurial spirit, Beatrice didn’t have the skills she needed to earn a significant profit. She relied on loans and was worried about paying for her children to attend secondary school. Beatrice knew she needed to make a change. During her training at Street Business School, she learned how to market to new customers and began selling her snacks to parents dropping their children off at school. Each week, Beatrice counts her growing profits with a smile on her face. She knows she will be able to care for her family no matter what challenges may come her way. With six children in school and three booming businesses, the future has never looked brighter for her family. As Beatrice told us,
“This training totally changed my life!”
Read Beatrice’s full story below:
Born in Kanyanya in a family of 9 children, her parents were mainly farmers who struggled to educate all of them. Beatrice did some schooling and finally went to a teachers’ training institute and qualified as a grade III teacher (primary teacher). As a single young woman, life was good since she didn’t have much responsibility.
When Beatrice got married 2 years later to a teacher and had 6 children to take care of, the situation changed a lot. Since her husband was also a teacher, their meager earnings were not enough to sustain the family moreover the working hours were very long. The school had some farm land so Beatrice and her husband toiled in the fields when they were not teaching, trying to sustain their big family. This was still not enough so Beatrice finally made the hard decision to stay home and look after the children. She used her savings and some money from her husband to start up a poultry business. Income from the sale of eggs enabled them to educate their children.
Beatrice continually sought more ways in which to increase the house hold income. She worked very hard and tried as much as possible to save so she was able to save some money and start rearing pigs. A friend of hers also taught her how to make snacks and she tried as much as possible to engage the children in all the businesses she was doing.
“I now know that quality is important, I know how to make my products unique to stand out from the rest and I no longer rely on loans as I know that I can work with what I have to achieve my goals!”
“I now know how to compete with the others in the same business, can manage my money better and I have also learnt how to separate my savings into different categories.”
UPDATE NOVEMBER 2018: Beatrice currently faces a challenge of transporting her snacks to her customers but she is positive that if she works hard enough, she will be able to buy a car in future.
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