Last week we had our final sessions with the participants of the Africa Food360 programm ein Zambia. We were so impressed by the quality and content of the videos, pictures and presentations that they shared. If there is one thing that became clear is that these Zambian women entrepreneurs never give up and are very creative! Some examples:
- Sianga Farm could not sell their high value vegetables since hotels and restaurants were closed. Elizabeth was inspired by Brilliant Entrepreneur and started the online training program ‘Extraordinary Agripreneur’, and already trained 800 young farmers!
- The demand for luxury products like energy bars dropped tremendously, so Chiumphe started cooking meals for home delivery. This was an instant success, and she will continue this business, next to the production of her peanut bars.
- The demand for basic and bulk products increased a lot. Many of the entrepreneurs jumped into this opportunity and started growing and selling vegetables and staple food crops. Good for their business, good for the smallholder farmers they work with, and good for feeding the population!
We were proud to hear that thanks to our training, participants gained the confidence to dare things they didn’t dare before. Namakau indicated that before she would never had dared to express herself in a video like she did. Lilian learned to dream big and made her first export! We look back with great satisfaction and gratitude at this year of being with the women entrepreneurs from Zambia.
Another great change that the Zambian participants experienced, was the strengthening of their teams. They identified the unique talents of their own team members.They discovered that all their team members have unique talents! This gave them inspiration, focus and confidence and resulted in into more cooperation within teams, delegation of tasks, and supporting each other. We ended our training with an exercise about the wisdom they gained over the last year. Here we saw many beautiful examples of the value of working as a team. Some examples of the wisdom they gained over the last year, and that are ready to be put on a Dutch tile, to be seen, read and learned from by everybody!
- For things to grow, you need to nourish them with love, care and persistence
- Nature has taught me to persevere and never give up
- To grow you have to appreciate others and celebrate every little achievement
- Our differences make us a great team that can achieve anything
- If we open up, we learn every day from other people
- Keep moving. That wow moment will surely come.
- Richness and charm lie in the people you work with every day
