{{Entrepreneurial skills that many perceive as relevant only to big cooperatives can be useful to the growth of small scale associations which often collapse due to lack of expertise from their founders.
\n}}<\/p>\n
The Kigali City Council through its stakeholders wants to change this by training women associations involved in basketry to acquire some management skills.<\/p>\n
So far, over 80 women representing various weaving associations have been trained on several domains of entrepreneurship. Francois d\u2019 Assise Tangineza, a trainer in the program notes that the trainees are mostly taught how to market their products as well as management of their business.<\/p>\n
This is not enough since better management starts from a well written business plan that may facilitate their access to credit from financial institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the main challenges these small associations face is lack of enough working capital that\u2019s why there\u2019re not sustainable,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n
After the courses, trainers follow up their students to find out if acquired skills are put into practice: \u201cNormally, we obliged them to write a good business plan for their respective associations which is not only used to monitor their progress but also advocate for funds\u201d. Tangineza clarified.<\/p>\n
And since working capital matters a lot, the trainees are discouraged from relying on loans which at times might come late hence they are taught other ways of raising income to support their cooperatives.<\/p>\n
A good example is evidenced by one Umugore Mwiza basketry association whose members have been selling groceries from their kitchen gardens to support the association.<\/p>\n
The Association\u2019s leader Clemence Nyiramategura affirms that out of the16 members, each contributes10 percent of their profits from vegetables sold, though the amount raised is not yet satisfactory to the association\u2019s progress: \u201cWe only have less than Frw 50,000 in our account which is so discouraging given the attractive products we make\u201d she lamented.<\/p>\n
However, with the management skills acquired, the association and similar income-generating ventures will no longer lag behind especially on accountability to loans members take without any serious attention to likely consequences: \u201cWe can\u2019t continue like this, really it\u2019s time we became strict, particularly to those who haven\u2019t paid back credit borrowed from the association.\u201d<\/p>\n
As earlier indicated Nyiramategura claims that they have attractive products which include traditional mini-baskets (Agaseke) highly demanded by tourists yet the association does not sell much partly due to lack of proper marketing skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that advertising our products is very essential and that\u2019s why we\u2019re in talks with KCC to give us a venue in the city where we can showcase our baskets. I also hope that some of our members who have been taught in marketing skills will be useful,\u201d she emphasized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Entrepreneurial skills that many perceive as relevant only to big cooperatives can be useful to the growth of small scale associations which often collapse due to lack of expertise from their founders. }} The Kigali City Council through its stakeholders wants to change this by training women associations involved in basketry to acquire some management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"byline":[158],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","byline-b_igi_adm1n"],"bylines":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"contributors":[{"id":158,"name":"b_igi_adm1n","slug":"b_igi_adm1n","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":1}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}