Empowering African Women

Empowering African Women

8^th September 2006

The tyranny of distance, didn't stop the cavaliers.
So why should it stop me? Living on the sea.

Split Enz - Six months on a leaky boat

I was talking to this African lady. She described her situation as hopeless and she felt powerless. It just broke my heart.

Finding a way to empower some African is a fine goal. My way of achieving it goes as follows.

Build them an online presence to sell their crafts
In a previous life I used to build web sites. Rather complex web sites. They used to do all sorts of whiz-bang stuff. One of them even won a Technological Innovation of the Year award. *cough* Showoff *cough* The curious among you can check out the case study for the project here.

So, I've had plenty of experience at building web sites.

My Big Idea to help the women of Africa is to build them an online presence (the Internet) from where the can sell their goods. This will help them to reach markets that have been traditionally well out of their reach. It will remove, as Split Enz said, the tyranny of distance.

Jeffrey Sachs, in his book The End of Poverty, identifies geography as one of the prime reasons that Africa is so poor. Africa lacks navigable rivers with access to oceans for easy trade - a situation which is intensified for a land locked country like Uganda. Africans have tended to live in highland areas where the rainfall is more favorable, but this has made trade even more difficult. Driving goods up and down a mountain is just expensive. ¹

It is my hope that this website will help to remove the tyranny of distance - and geography - for a small number of African women.

Marketing
Many a website has been beautifully designed and written, but have failed dismally. They built it, but no one came. In my opinion, many of them failed because of poor marketing.

The Invisible Children campaign is a great example of a good message - young children being kidnapped and being forced to fight in the armies in Northern Uganda - coupled with great marketing.

One of their fundraisers is the selling of bracelets made by the women of Northern Ugandan. Each bracelet comes in a dinky little box and is accompanied by a DVD that features one child's story. I bought one such bracelet for the princely sum of $NZ 25 when I went on a Global Night Commute. Did I get ripped off? Or was I swayed by good marketing?

Here are my marketing ideas.

One women, one product
I'm sure everybody seen those World Vision advertisements. They strongly push the angle that you can't save the world, but you can save one child.

I'm going for a similar angle. You won't be buying a bracelet, you will be buying Margaret's Bracelet. The money you will be laying down won't be for every woman in Africa, it will be for Margaret (or whoever).

Margaret herself will model the bracelet. You won't see the bracelet without seeing Margaret. Here is an example photo.

When you click on the bracelet you will get a short biography of Margaret's life and the struggles she faces. Photographs of Margaret and the inevitably large number of hungry children she is looking after will also be shown. I even plan to have a link to a video of Margaret. The videos will open with something like:

Hello. My name is Margaret. I live in the village of Kitale and I make bracelets.

The video will show Margaret's day to day life, which - lets face it - is not easy.
Focus on Women
I don't know why, but the women and children tend to get more sympathy from me than the men. I don't know why and I don't care either. I'm sure other people feel the same way too.

The women tend to do the lion's share of work. They tend to the children, work the back-breaking land and prepare all the meals.

This is not to imply that African men are lazy. They're not. This is just the way things have worked out over many of years.

A friend of mine asked an African man why he wasn't helping a lady move a large number of boxes. He said that if he did, it would be like a Western man walking down the street in a pink dress. Rightly or wrongly, men just don't seem to help as much.
Global Volunteer Network
GVN (the Global Volunteer Network) is the organisation I volunteer through. I think they are aiming to place 2,500 volunteers this year, so they are a large organisation.

GVN publishes articles and sends out newsletters to a large number of people who obviously have a passion for helping the poor. Yours truly featured in one of their articles.

I'm sure GVN would be more than happy to run such an article about the website. Well reasonably happy anyway. I had a bit of a tête-à-tête with them a while back.²Erina - a current volunteer - is a budding journalist. I think she'd enjoy writing such an article.
Current Volunteers
New volunteers - all bright eyed and bushy tailed - tend to extremely keen and want to save the world. I ain't gonna stop 'em pushing the product.
Previous Volunteers
I'm sure some previous volunteers - both from Uganda and other countries - would love to buy some crafts from ladies they might know.

Or ladies they don't know.

Either way is good.

I'm sure many of them will want to inflict the website onto their friends and loved ones.
Friends and loved ones
And speaking of friends and loved ones, they too are a valuable resource to be tapped into it.

I'm sure I could get my family involved.

Janice, my sister, is heavily involved in her church. I could give her marketing materials - videos of the ladies, sample crafts - and she could take orders or point them to the website. *waves to Janice* Send me an email if you're interested sis.

Ditto for me Mum and the numerous groups she is involved in.
eBay and Trademe
Both eBay and Trademe (the New Zealand equivalent) open up massive markets for anybody that wants to sell anything.

I plan to sell the crafts on these sites as well. This will hopefully:
- Bring in more sales
- Give me an idea on what the market rates are for these products
- Provide a link to the website for those that are interested
  
  I'm not sure how open they will be to having a commercial website linked on their website. Hopefully I can twist some arms and find someway around it.
  
  Maybe not a link to the website, but to www.crazymalc.co.nz, where their stories could also be found.
  
  I don't really care how they are sold, as long as they are sold.
www.crazymalc.co.nz
www.crazymalc.co.nz gets about one hundred unique visitors a day.

Many of these are regular readers who are too shy to say "hi!". I know you're out there! Drop me a line sometime.

The website will be heavily pushed on www.crazymalc.co.nz
The Feel-Good Factor
Repeat business is the best business. They are the cheapest people to market to.

A good way to make people buy from you again is to make them feel good about their purchase.

Ideas on promoting the feel-good factor include:
- Some type of personal message from the lady
  This might be a pig of a thing to coordinate, but might be well worth the effort.
  
  Maybe a whole stack of hand written thank you notes that we could hand out with each purchase.
  
  Maybe a scanned copy of a thank you note could be emailed to them.
  
  Maybe a photo them holding up said thank you note.
- Packaging
  Stuffing a bracelet into an envelope and scribbling the buyer's name on the front is not acceptable. The packaging and the experience of opening the package should be paramount.
  
  I'm not the best at this sort of stuff. I only know that it is important. Could be something a different volunteer could get their teeth stuck into. Not literally though. We don't want to be sending spit overseas...

Phew! So those are my ideas for marketing. I'd be more than happy to hear any ideas that y'all might have.

Potential Pitfalls
There is risk in every business. This website is a business, and therefore a risk. Potential pitfalls include:

Nothing sells
This is the most obvious one. If nothing sells then this project will be a failure. The marketing ideas above provide the best solution to this problem.
Crappy Crafts
The crafts have to be of marketable quality. I won't be selling crap crafts.
Transport becomes a burden
Getting the crafts from the ladies who make it to the post office may become problematic.

I may end up giving the ladies all the packaging materials and get them to take the crafts to the post office. I'm sure they could come up with creative ways to get the packages to the post office.
Postage becomes a burden
Postage may get too expensive and may take too long. I've got some crafts being sent out to people in the United Kingdom, U.S.A., and New Zealand to see how long it takes and how much it will cost.

The "Thanks for buying!" email will mention something like:

...

We ask you to keep in mind that we are selling you these crafts from rural Africa. Some of these ladies have to walk two hours just to get water! So we ask you for your patience with regards to receiving your purchase. A three to four week wait is normal.

...
Malcolm goes off the deep end
I haven't worked really hard for a long long time. The most recent time was when I worked hard in the Philippines around exam time. It wasn't that hard though.

The time before that was at enabling technologies, and that was a catalyst - though not the thing itself - that led to all my mental health problems.

I'm obviously critical to this project and it is going to require a lot of hard work on my part. Just collecting information on the ladies and documenting their stories is a lot of work, let alone all the technical stuff I need to do behind the scenes.

I need to be very careful that I don't push myself too hard and hand off other tasks to people whenever I can.

If the project looks as if it is going nowhere and is going to require a massive effort to turn it around, then I am going to pull the plug on it. The last time I threw myself up against a brick wall, I ended up a bloody mess.

Other Random Ideas

Marketing Materials for volunteers in waiting
Me old mate Mathew Phelps did a power point presentation to try and raise money for his volunteering in the Buduburum Refugee Camp. He raised no money and most people replied, "Why would we want to fund your holiday?"

It is a good question which, I assume, Matty had no answer to.

Some volunteers sign up, stay quiet for six months, and then arrive.

Some volunteers sign up, go gung-ho crazy raising money for six months, and then arrive.

All this wealth of videos, photos and marketing materials could be sent to these people so that they don't face similar problems to those that Matty had.
Water Pumps, Mosquito Nets, Malaria Medication...
I want to push the idea to the ladies of setting aside a portion of every sale to a project. Maybe 75% of the sale goes to them and 25% goes to a project fund.

The project fund would be used for things like water pumps, mosquito nets and malaria medication.

Exactly what it would be used for would be up to the ladies, which bring me to my next point.

Craft Committees
I am going to insist that each group of craft making women form a committee so they decide on things such as:
- How the money is distributed
  I suspect that some of the crafts will sell like hot cakes and some will be dead ducks. So Margaret's bracelets might sell ten times more than Susan's necklaces. I imagine that Susan will end up helping to make Margaret's necklaces.
  
  To ensure that everybody benefits, the committee needs to decide how the money will be divided up. An equal share of all sales seems the most obvious choice, but I'll leave them to make that decision.
- Who is in, who is out
  This sounds like a harsh sort of a thing to say. But if Lazy Lisa suddenly starts helping when she sees there is money to be made, then what sort of share does she get?
  
  Once again, this is up to the ladies.
- What project to save for
  I've suggested 25% should go towards buying something like mosquito nets, water pumps or malaria medication.
  
  Exactly what proportion of the money goes towards the project and what the project is will be up to the ladies.
Automated text messages
Uganda is experiencing a kind of technology leap-froging. No villages have land lines, but a villager or two have cell phones.

This provides us with a great opportunity to send them text messages on what crafts are required.

Every time a sale is made, a text is sent to someone in the village that says something like:

3 x Margaret Necklace, 6 x Blue Susan Place mats, Malcolm Trevena 19A Sheen Street, Roslyn, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Handing it over
I want to have nothing to do with this project when I leave Uganda on the 30th of January 2007. I want it to be completely in the hands of Ugandans, or possibly future volunteers. To accomplish this I plan to:

Web access for adding of product
New products can be added from any internet portal. It will be made as simple as possible and will require no knowledge of fugly things like HTML and databases.
Hosting
Hosting costs money. I'll initially pay for the domain name and hosting (maybe about $10 US) a month. These costs will need to come from the sales somehow.

Which also opens up the whole question of accounts and financial statements, which is a thought for another day.
Gathering Information
Someone local will need to take the lead on gathering more information from more women. I'm sure future volunteers won't mind lending their digital cameras for all the photography and video work.

Best Practice Volunteerism

Let's apply my Best Practice Volunteerism questions to this project.

Would this of happened if I wasn't here?
Nope. It is my idea and I can't imagine anyone local coming up with the idea let alone lead it to completion.
Will this continue to happen when I am gone?
I hope so at this point, but I don't know so. I have plans - as discussed in the Handing it Over section above - and I hope they work out. I do have my doubts though.

I have concerns about the technological literacy - and literacy itself - of the local Ugandans.

Someone will need to take the lead on this project when I am gone and run with it.

Measuring Success
Goals should always be specific and measurable. So, if I am to achieve this goal by the time I leave, then the following needs to happen:

Little of no minimal involvement on my part
I'm lazy. What can I say.

For this project to be truly successful it needs to continue to happen when I am gone.
A working web site
Won't get far without this one!
Money flowing smoothly into the hands of the people that need it

Deep Breath
This project is big and will require a lot of work. It has risk involved and might turn out to be an almighty flop.

I can no longer stand the though of being a tourist doing some volunteerism on the side, so the risk is worth it for me.

At the very least I am going to learn some valuable lessons on the way!

¹ Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty, 2005 Edition, p. 208.

²My tongue is firmly place in cheek here. I'm sure they'll publish the article.

Questions? Comments? Try contacting me.
Wanna receive an email whenever this site gets updated? Click here.

(c) 2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to link to this page. Heck, you can even copy stuff from here if you want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.