It’s not uncommon to hear about entrepreneurs who failed severally before coming up strongly to build a thriving new startup. These stories are inspiring in their own way; but to CoreHw, it’s more inspiring to hear about people who started with as low as 1000/= and are now at an investment worth 30,000/= and even more encouraging when youths who had nothing in mind about starting a business now starting up highly profitable businesses. The youths from the community have been meeting regularly to brainstorm on what they can do as a team and as an individual to reduce the high unemployment rate in the country. In other words; to start self-sustainable businesses. It all started with trainings on different farming activities like hydroponics farming, BSF and poultry farming and some youths thought they would venture into some of the farming activities to produce enough for in house consumption and excess for selling; but their poverty level was such a drawback to their ideas. Thanks to Rachel, they were trained on how to start saving any little amount they get. With as low as 50/=, they started saving their money in kibistar cooperative. Parallelly to saving, Rachel was taking them through business idea generation, planning and managing trainings every week on Thursdays through google meet.
A total of 25 youths have been attending the training since it started out of which 3 have ventured into poultry. 1 has started a tailoring shop, 1 started a MPESA shop apart from the eggs’ shop he was already running, 1 is now hawking tea leaves and doing hydroponics farming for commercial purposes, 1 has started an agrovet, 1 is selling milk and eggs and one group is already working on starting a bakery while one other group is on planning stage of starting a recreational center at the dam.
The story of kizito and Agastas is just a representation of
how the training has transformed our youths.
Kizito finished his high school level two years ago and due to lack of school fees, that was the end of his academic journey. He had moved into different towns in search of a job to help his parents provide for his siblings without any success. For him to Join the training, he had come back home to pick his national Identification card before going back to the city to continue searching for a job when he met his friend Agastas who informed him about the ongoing Youths training on Entrepreneurship. He decided not to travel back to the city immediately after the first training.
Kizito started hawking tea leaves from the transport he was supposed to use to travel back to the city. With the hydroponics training in him and business diversification training from Rachel, he’s been saving his profit which he used to start hydroponics farming where he’s growing beetroots and vegetables. He has now managed to buy one sheep from the two investment and he’s hoping to expand his business with time. He’s an entrepreneur who started his journey with no funding and no experience in business completely, yet despite the odds he’s still able to build massive successes.
Agastas, the entrepreneur who advised Kizito to stay around, was pretty much broke when he started selling eggs. He took all the cash he had saved in the cooperative, about ksh.20,000 and racked up an additional 10,000 debt to start an MPESA shop and add more eggs to his shelves.
The young man, who was born in a small village coming from poverty but with a global mind out of influence from Rachel’s training and agricultural trainings through CoreHW has now developed impressive skills; he has set up a farm structure for rearing pigs, rabbits, chicken and goats. It is unbelievable that the MPESA and the eggs’ shop has managed to expand his business this tremendously. “I must be among the few who run our ward’s economy some days to come” says Agastas
