Barefoot MBA

First Microenterprise Training Sessions

Posted on by Jasper Yan

We had our first microenterprise lessons to the leaders of HIV Support Groups and Village AIDS Committees (Community Healthcare Volunteers that facilitate the formation of these groups) under the auspices of St. Gabriel’s Hospitals here in Namitete, Malawi.

Of the 144 students we were anticipating, about 100 arrived from all over the Namitete region, mostly by bike.  Our students were a diverse group of men and women of all ages.  We had informed them of the trainings using Frontline SMS, an innovative and affordable technology that uses existing SMS and cell-phone networks as a means of communication among large groups of people such as our students.

Most of our students arrived on bike.
Most of our students arrived on bike.

We had divvied them up into four groups of 36 to facilitate group discussion. We covered 6 topics that Angela (the HIV Support Group Liaison here at St. Gabriel’s Hospital) had handpicked from our Malawian-adapted Barefoot MBA lessons, and she worked hard to translate all 6 topics into Chichewa

These topics included:

  1. Planning and Records
  2. Savings
  3. Production
  4. Debt
  5. Investing
  6. Incentives

The general structure of the Barefoot MBA lessons included (in the following order):

  • Overall concept
  • Background story
  • Specific, story A demonstrating a bad example of the concept
  • Specific, story B demonstrating a good example of the concept
  • Questions asking about the stories, ranging from simple recall questions to full-on application to their own experiences.
  • Summary of the stories and concept

We decided that it would be best to reinforce the concepts and stories using PowerPoint. It was useful to have the stories displayed on the wall, as the students often repeated and read over the stories after Angela presented the stories, which is typical of the Malawian learning style.   Also, we thought that it would be best to have stories remain on the PowerPoint for reference while Angela asked them questions.

We had a PowerPoint set up to reinforce main concepts and stories.
We had a PowerPoint set up to reinforce main concepts and stories. Screen reads "Planning and Records" in Chichewa. Trainings took place in the hospital's cafeteria.

Halfway through the training, we had a 15-minute break with refreshments. This worked wonders in terms of livening up discussion. It’s amazing what sugar can do to a class!

It is customary to provide refreshments at any trainings at the hospital, especially because transportation to and from the hospital is such a burden. Coconut cookies ($0.67) and Soda ($0.40)
It is customary to provide refreshments at any trainings at the hospital, especially because transportation to and from the hospital is such a burden. Coconut cookies ($0.67) and Soda ($0.40)

Because the entire lesson was taught in Chichewa, it was hard for us to understand what was really going on.  We did get quite excited, though, when we observed energetic discussion going on about the stories and topics.

Angela (St. Gabriel's HIV Support Group Liaison) teaching our lessons in Chichewa (local language here)
Angela (St. Gabriel's HIV Support Group Liaison) teaching our lessons in Chichewa (local language here)

We were reminded of the HIV Support Group and VAC’s dependence on St. Gabriel’s Hospital during our lesson on Debt; the students had asked why St. Gabriel’s was not giving them money at this training.  This dependence on the hospital is a source of frustration for not only us, but the leaders of the hospital.  Financial and agricultural resources recently given to these groups as a means of setting up income-generating projects have not been used wisely, since the groups tend to simply distribute these resources among themselves.  For example, instead of ensuring that donated pigs reproduce enough piglets for a steady and consistent supply of pigs, the groups tend to simply distribute these pigs amongst themselves instead of breeding them, and after the pigs are slaughtered, they ask the hospital once more for another donation of pigs.

During our next lessons on the 26th and 27th of July, we plan on teaching our students how to implement the business skills that they learned during this week’s training.  We will also emphasize achieving financial independence from the hospital by taking a loan from Opportunity International Bank of Malawi (OIBM), which would make them much more accountable spending loaned resources wisely.  A major difficulty with obtaining a loan from OIBM is that one must go to the Malawian capital Lilongwe (about 45 minutes transportation by minibus) to obtain this loan.  Also we have heard that there are stringent requirements such as business plans and training classes.  This is perfectly understandable from OIBM’s perspective; business operations must be sustainable, and these stringent requirements ensure that the majority of loans are repaid.  Hopefully, our training will be adequate preparation for these students to take this next step in obtaining capital for their small business.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Barefoot MBA Lessons for Implementation in Malawi

Posted on by Jasper Yan

“Don’t reinvent the wheel.”

During this internship, we were placed with the task of reinforcing small-business skills in both community healthcare workers and HIV support groups. Just a couple days ago, I was tearing my hair out trying to reorganize and revamp our lessons on basic business concepts. For some reason, the organization and structure of the lessons just didn’t make sense to me, and it was so incredibly frustrating.

In hopes of getting inspiration for our lessons, I turned towards the incredible set of lesson plans by Barefoot MBA, an open-source project started by two students from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. As I read the Authors’ Notes from the curriculum they had developed for rural India, I became so excited to see that they shared the same teaching goals, constraints, and expectations that we also face here with our target population in Malawi:

“Our sources consistently emphasized the need for just-in-time learning: teaching only skills and concepts so fundamental to the fabric of our subjects’ immediate needs that they perceive no choice but to learn them. Understanding what those immediate needs are has been a daunting task. Though we have listed lessons in an order that makes sense for many, we intentionally have kept them short, allowing the local adapters to select and prioritize relevant lessons and to determine the timing of lesson delivery as circumstances dictate. For example, a village might teach a set of three lessons over one three-hour session on a weekend or over three one-hour sessions on weekday evenings.” – Barefoot MBA

We showed these Barefoot MBA lessons to Casey Nesbit, who definitely has a much better understanding of education techniques and Malawian learning styles than we do. She remarked that the Barefoot MBA lessons were perfect for our audience; these lessons provided simple stories to illustrate the core concepts of each lesson, and follow-up questions ranging from simple comprehension to full-on discussion and application. To put it simply: the Barefoot MBA lessons were written by people that had done a tremendous amount of research in developing appropriate educational material to teach entrepreneurship in low-resource settings like ours. It is comprehensive as it covers 15 topics, which may be chosen and reordered based on what the target audience already knows.

The constraints that we are facing make implementation and adaptation of Barefoot MBA ideal:

  1. Despite the fact that we had conducted field research visiting the various HIV support groups, we still do not fully understand how much our students do and do not know. The flexibility and comprehensiveness of Barefoot MBA allows our HIV support group liaison (Angela) and community healthcare volunteer liaison (Alexander) to select the appropriate lessons based on their experiences with both groups.
  2. Although we know that our students will have a primary-education background, we’re not exactly sure what that entails. The follow-up questions that Barefoot MBA has after each story demonstrating a concept gradually increase in difficulty, and this ensures that we can cater to the learning ability of all of our students.
  3. It is a burden for HIV support group members and community healthcare volunteers to travel long distances to attend trainings at the hospital. Therefore, we are limited to 2 sessions that are 3 hours each. The flexibility and simplicity of each Barefoot MBA lesson allows it to easily stand on its own or in combinations. For example, if community healthcare volunteers need to come for a medical-related training at the hospital, a Barefoot MBA lesson could also be easily and quickly implemented at the end of the training.

During our first training session, we will implement Barefoot MBA lessons to teach and reinforce basic business principles. These Barefoot MBA lessons will be translated into Chichewa and are completely adapted to Malawi. Therefore, these adapted Barefoot MBA lessons could potentially be taught by anyone here in Malawi, and they don’t even need to know English! I know that a great majority of the Peace Corp volunteers here in Malawi are also working on teaching entrepreneurship skills, and hopefully this will be helpful to them, as well. During our second training session, we will be focusing on implementation of basic business principles, mainly by teaching them how to develop action plans, budgets, and accounting/cash-flow ledgers.

I am so excited that our microenterprise program is finally coming together, and that what we develop now can hopefully be of use to other volunteers here in Malawi. Once we are done with the translations, our first round of teaching these lessons, and final revisions, we hope to make our microenterprise program for Malawian settings available to everyone. After all, what’s the use in “reinventing the wheel,” when we’ve already put this much time into it already!