The Beginning
OneLove Africa founder, Suzanne Dane, first travelled to Tanzania in 2010, accompanying a group of BCom graduates from Royal Roads University who had received funding to start three businesses and transition these enterprises to local residents. She focused on identifying what resources might be available for mentoring and sustainability once the business ventures had been launched. Having found no resource materials related to business management in the Kilimanjaro region, Suzanne had been exploring the idea of developing a business start-up handbook that would be printed in both English and Kiswahili.
She ended up connecting with the founders of the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology (KCCO) who were interested in providing micro enterprise training to the 48 women involved in their Sentinel Advocacy Program. The program was launched by KCCO in 2008, recognizing that health
care is intimately tied to economic independence and women with their own
sources of income generally are more likely to have decision making authority
and thus more likely to use eye care services. Suzanne's focus on creating a handbook expanded to include developing and delivering a six-week entrepreneurial training program.
Despite the challenges associated with getting to the training sites from the remote areas (often in torrential rainstorms) and adapting to being in a classroom/learning environment again after many, many years (most Africans have no more than a grade three education) 96% of the women completed the course and 85% of the women started businesses.
Despite the challenges associated with getting to the training sites from the remote areas (often in torrential rainstorms) and adapting to being in a classroom/learning environment again after many, many years (most Africans have no more than a grade three education) 96% of the women completed the course and 85% of the women started businesses.
Hai Region Graduates