EnterWASH: Growth beyond skills

We did it! The first cohort of participants finished the EnterWASH training – a 10-day intensive training programme on entrepreneurship and innovation in WASH – and pitched their business ideas in front of a critical panel of experts. Reflecting back on the training, it was indeed intense – for both us and the 22 participants. We were fortunate to have a great group of young people with diverse backgrounds, ambitions and interests: WASH fanatics and jewellery makers, pure water sellers and communication graduates – they are all now part of the EnterWASH family.

One of the intended outcomes of EnterWASH is that participants – aged between 18 and 35 – will set up sustainable businesses in WASH. They worked on developing and validating their business idea, by speaking to potential customers and experts and prototyping the product or service. Only the most promising ideas will have the chance to enter the second phase of the programme.

Confidence boosting

Beyond the business side of things, a lot more is happening, much of it in the background, away from our attention. Think of the conversations that participants will have with their family and friends about the programme and their business idea. This is a further outcome that we are aiming for: we want participants to be advocates of WASH and even become change agents in their communities. For this to be possible, participants need to be passionate about the subject while believing in their own abilities, because: if you are not certain about your own convictions and expertise, would you take the step to share it with others?

If you have learned a lot yet are not confident about it, you are less likely to spread the word. On the other hand, if you believe in your abilities, why keep the learning to yourself? This is why – halfway through the training – we asked participants to reflect on what they thought of the programme thus far, receiving responses such as: “I got so many new ideas which I will share with others, “I didn’t realise I had this entrepreneurial spirit in me”, It has given me confidence and empowered me to do”, “I am excited to put the learning into practice” and “it feels secure that we are all in this together!”

Expecting success

The expectation that we have about our abilities to perform well is called self-efficacy. The theory behind this was developed by Albert Bandura. Seeking to explain why some people act more than others, he found that the strength of self-efficacy differs greatly between people. When people’s self-efficacy is high, they are more likely to put their abilities into action, while those with a low self-efficacy may not even try. Interestingly, it is not about whether the person can or cannot do it, but rather it’s the belief that matters most.

So, yes we all want to have high self-efficacy beliefs. But…how to get there? You can achieve this through learning from others and receiving positive encouragement (“you can do it!”). Direct experiences, however – when positive and successful – are the most powerful. For this, practice and constructive feedback are key. We have encouraged participants to put their learning into practice and iterate – to see what others are doing and pivot where needed. We want them to believe in their ability to set up a business in WASH. What if you have doubts? Fake it ‘til you become it.

The peculiarities of a WASH start-up: Customer needs vs. societal urgency

 

Early morning in Cape Coast

I spent the last 6 weeks in Cape Coast managing a programme called Balloon Ghana, for young people aged 18 to 35 who’d like to start a new business or expand their existing one. In as little as 6 weeks, international volunteers and local entrepreneurs worked together to create and test new business ideas. The entrepreneurs with the most promising idea receive a grant to accelerate the business.

The city of Cape Coast has always been one of my favourite places in Ghana, with its beautiful old buildings and its long stretches of beach, lined by dozens of palm trees. Unfortunately, the beach is also lined with heaps of rubbish – plastics, bottles, packaging, and food waste. I had high hopes that creative solutions for these heaps of waste would feature among the ideas in the programme.

Wasted opportunity

In reality, there was only one: a young man who uses plastic water sachets to make ladies’ bags (not entirely novel but nonetheless an interesting idea). Unfortunately, in the short time given he was unable to gather enough evidence to show that his business was viable. Some of the businesses that did very well in the programme where those related to food: from porridge in the morning, refreshing juices in the afternoon and home-cooked stew in the evening, those businesses were more or less assured of demand.

What can we learn from this? People like to spend their money on buying tasty and ready-to-eat food, for which the value proposition is clear. However, people are less prepared to pay for products where the use or benefit for them is unclear. Why should they buy a bag made out of plastic sachets when they can get a nice fabric bag for a similar price? What’s in it for them?

Convincing customers about the benefits

The Mom Test of Rob Fitzpatrick provides useful insights on how to learn if your business is a good idea. Much of the time, people go out with their idea and try to convince people about their product or service. They end up talking a lot instead of listening to what the customer wants, as well as remembering the compliments and forgetting to get to the bottom of their customers’ interests.

Asking the right questions is especially important for WASH start-ups. There are a lot of taboos around the issues, so people may not always tell you the truth – identifying a need is not the same as making a sale. Yes, people need toilets, but what would persuade them to pay for it? A WASH business will probably need more time to understand its market than a food business. Customers may need more time to understand what a WASH business could offer them. This is what makes a WASH start-up different from others.

A duty to educate

The question is: how much time should we spend on educating potential customers about the benefits for customers and the urgency for the environment? Should we try to convince them?

Yes and no. We have to find out what it is that people truly care about. If it isn’t the environment or their health, then what is it? Do people understand the connection between the cleanliness of their communities and the quality of drinking water that they can access? Can we educate people about the urgency of the issues and the need for change?

Start-up entrepreneurs in WASH need to listen to their potential customers and at the same time be passionate about the social goal they have. WASH entrepreneurs should enjoy educating and creating awareness about the importance of their products or services – for the benefit of society. Rather than simply trying to make a sale, they should aim to understand why people buy a product. The duty extends beyond that of getting paid customers, to educating and informing people about the ‘what if’ implications if you don’t buy the product.

If persuaded, the sales may not last. Instead, be passionate, and know your stuff. Don’t fish for compliments; start a dialogue and listen.

Written by Lisa Freiburg, Trainer Consultant at MDF West Africa 

Dreaming to succeed, daring to fail

Almost one year ago (whoops, time flies when you’re having fun) I came to Ghana with one key assignment: to develop and implement EnterWASH, a training programme for young people who want to start a business in water, sanitation and hygiene. Together with my fellow YEPper* Eric, we talked to many young people, organisations and companies that we thought could help towards achieving our aims. We thought hard and wrote a lot, sometimes full of clear ideas and sometimes not. One organisation said this, and the other said that. After some time, we realised again how important it is to get out there and actually test our ideas; just do it. Now, we finally have a chance to get it out of our heads and test EnterWASH in practice, all thanks to VIA Water.  

VIA Water supports projects with innovative solutions for water problems facing cities in seven African countries, sharing the idea of actually testing new ideas to see what works in practice. The programme is a cooperation between UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education and Aqua for All, and is being funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It’s okay to fail – a new development discourse?

It’s okay to fail, you say? The great thing about VIA Water is that it gives people and organisations the freedom to take risks and invest time and money in untested approaches, products and services that seek to improve access to water. Taking a leap, so to speak. And failure is something that goes hand in hand with that.

In the world of business, it is widely known that between 80 and 90% of start-ups fail. While this failure rate is somehow accepted, how acceptable is this for projects and programmes in the development sector? It’s not easy to invest money into something that you know might fail, and even more so in the development sector because the money often comes from the tax payer.

Of course, VIA Water isn’t aiming for failure, and neither are we with EnterWASH. However, ViaWater recognise (and so do we!) that one needs to be able to make mistakes and learn from them in order to succeed. For innovation to take place, we need to fail fast and often in such a way that it helps us pivot our thinking and activities at the right moments, without losing sight of our goals.

Embracing failure: easier said than done

Embracing failure can be quite scary and it takes a bold person and approach. Despite promoting innovation, ViaWater still asked us “what is your evidence that this will work?” In all honesty, we don’t have the evidence and we don’t know for certain whether it will work.

Yes sure, we’ve developed our concept based on previous experiences and learnings from others doing similar things. We are trying to do something that worked in one context (geographical or thematic) but that may not work in another. Maybe we will find that a business in WASH is simply not as profitable as doing business in other sectors. And maybe we’ll find that young people find it impossible to crowdfund because of their status in society.

To embrace failure, you need to keep an open mind, be honest to yourself and calm in the face of changes. If you are convinced that something works in a certain way yet this proves untrue, it is very hard to let go of it. So keep that open mind.

But…what if it works?

And maybe…of course there is a chance that we’ll succeed. For start-ups, the thought of actually succeeding is a scary one too. It means that the life you knew is over, that you’ll be working incredibly hard to keep things going for the years to come, with people looking up to you and expecting more. Success breeds expectations, and thus greater chances to fail again.

Always aim for the moon

We have to believe in our idea and we have to believe that we will succeed. We need to be ambitious. We want the young people participating in this programme to succeed in raising seed capital and establishing a successful business that is still going after 2 years. We want to see a strong network of people who also believe in the power of young people doing business. We want to see a new generation of products and services that solve some of Ghana’s most pressing challenges in WASH.

We, at MDF West Africa, are honoured and excited to embark upon this journey together with our partner Fair River International Association for Development (FARIAD), VIA Water and the wider VIA Water community. We hope that we can truly embrace failure and share it with the rest of the world.

We hope that we can iterate and fail often to come to a good end. And if it’s not good, it’s not yet the end.

To follow how we’re doing, please check our projects page on the VIA Water website.  

By Lisa Freiburg, Trainer Consultant, MDF West Africa / Young Expert Program Water (YEP Water)

*The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Netherlands Water Partnership have initiated the Young Expert Programme Water (YEP Water) with the objective of providing assurances for the continued availability of international professionalism and expertise in the water and agri & business sector. YEP offers Dutch young professionals an opportunity to acquire professional experience abroad and young local professionals an opportunity to take their first steps in an international work environment via Dutch organisations.

Young creatives needed in WASH

The EnterWASH programme specifically targets young people . It is not that we are rejecting the older generation of people working in the sector: on the contrary, we cannot do it without the input from highly experienced and seasoned professionals. But, we need the young ones too. Why?

Of course, there is the cliché reason that young people are fresh, unspoiled, and eager. They are less set in their ways because they simply have fewer experiences to reflect on – their perspective has not been skewed after years of seeing things succeed and fail, they are not yet tired of red tape and colleagues letting them down. And, most importantly: younger people are simply more creative and eager to explore.

In the very popular TED talk of creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson (20 minutes – well worth your time – not least because Sir Ken has a good sense of humour), Sir Ken argues that schools kill creativity. Basically, he says that we are all born Picassos, but we loose our creativity antennae through the years. He blames the (British) education system for this: whereas toddlers are actively encouraged to freely express themselves through playing and the arts slowly but steadily, children are groomed to fit into a well-structured system of timetables, exams, and maths competitions. All these structures and an emphasis on academic excellence do not nourish creativity, rather they teach children to stop focusing on the ‘trivial’ and get serious.

A* graduates without jobs

Now, let’s have a look at Ghana. As a former British colony, it is not surprising to see how the system is similar to that of the UK. Enormous value is placed upon getting high grades, and society celebrates those whose academic achievements are outstanding.

When teaching at a primary school in Ghana some years ago, I asked the students to write a paper about themselves and their career aspirations. A fairly straightforward exercise I thought. And fun too, because it was impossible for students to get it wrong as it was a personal and subjective reflection after all. Imagine the astonishment when I realised that many students had actually copied from each other. The students were so used to being graded that they played it safe and copied the ideas from fellow well-performing students, not realising that I had just given them an opportunity to freely express themselves. So yes, traditional schooling kills creativity in Ghana too.

The gift of human imagination

In his reflections, Ken Robinson stresses the need for us to appreciate the “gift of human imagination”, thus placing more value on our creative capacities. This particularly applies to the younger generation as they are ultimately our hope for the future. With EnterWASH, we are doing just that: unlocking the creative potential of young Ghanaians to come up with innovative business solutions to Ghana’s WASH challenges. You won’t hear us say “it’s not possible”… there’s always another way.

By Lisa Freiburg, Trainer Consultant MDF / Young Expert Programme Water

The ‘how to’ of attracting youth to the WASH sector

The challenges in water, sanitation and hygiene are a regular conversation topic in Ghana. But are young people aware of the opportunities in this sector?

For someone who has not been working in the sector for long (4 months, to be precise), I privately struggle with getting used to the frequent and open chatter about different types of toilets, open defecation and the beneficiary nutrients of urine. However, I realise that myself and many others must get over this awkward feeling. Because talking about it a lot is the only way to comprehend the huge scope of the challenges and opportunities in WASH.

Whether I am talking with someone from the many organisations working in the sector, the taxi driver on the journey to work or the young people who are seemingly fed up with the filthy landscape of Ghana’s communities (in addition to their frustration about the frequent power cuts), everyone has something to say about WASH. While people are mostly pointing at the government for failing to solve the issues, only a few are spotting and seizing the opportunities available.

Urinal in Madina, Accra © Lisa Freiburg

Thanks, but no thanks

Take Hassana – a widow of 46 years old with 3 children who lives in the bustling market area of Madina. Four years ago, she noticed that there were no toilet facilities available for the many people who run a stall at the market and the commuters who pass through the nearby station. She took the little savings she had and built 2 urinals. Today, she runs a business with 6 urinals, 4 bath rooms and a massive water storage, which supplies water to other businesses in the area.

Although you could argue that her business is successful and the money she makes is sufficient to feed her family (and even send her son to university!), I am not convinced that this type of business attracts young people (those who we will be targeting with our programme).

I think that while many youth would agree that there is indeed a need for more sanitation facilities, the majority of them would politely decline if given the opportunity to start a business like Hassana’s.

So, how to attract youth?

Apart from the money factor (yes, young people will listen when there’s money to be made – so I have been told), there are some very attractive and inspiring examples of young Ghanaians who have taken it upon themselves to tackle WASH challenges in their own way.

Akua Akyaa Nkrumah of the Green Ghanaian initiative © Akua Akyaa Nkrumah

Take the Green Ghanaian initiative – initially starting out as a blog, this group of young Ghanaians have set up a social enterprise that helps people to organise ‘green’ events. Their goal is to increase conversations around environmental issues and promote green behaviour (e.g. reduce indiscriminate waste disposal). For their efforts, they have received an award for Best Young Innovator at the Ghana Climate Innovation Bootcamp (an initiative of the World Bank and SNV).

I am certainly inspired by this and hope that through such examples more young Ghanaians will recognise what they themselves can do to solve Ghana’s WASH problems.

Lisa Freiburg

Trainer Consultant MDF West Africa / Young Expert Programme Water

Social entrepreneurship with plastic bags

Through business development people are trained and empowered to create a sustainable situation within their community

Setting up new and innovative companies addressing environmental issues is another way of looking at development.

Social Entrepreneurship can serve as a catalyst for this development.

The issue of social entrepreneurship has lately been much upheld and discussed. Across the globe, social entrepreneurship has been recommended. The affirmative response people attach to this subject has made it a necessity in our era.

Over the years, there have been variations in the meaning of social entrepreneurship due to its growing complexity. From one group of people to another, it is interpreted in different ways. Some people liken it to the corporate social responsibilities of businesses and also to not-for-profit organizations.

Though social entrepreneurship necessitates a business-like environment, it is distinguished from other entrepreneurial set-ups because a social mission is the chief factor. Hartigan (2004) indicates:

Social entrepreneurs offer practical solutions to change patterns that keep people poor and prove that it can be done. They do not join the crowd on the streets advocating for change but instead offer solutions.

Across the African continent, many governmental and benevolent efforts have not been able to live up to this expectation. Key social sector institutions have often shown to be unproductive and insensitive. Social entrepreneurs can help to address the long-lasting needs that hinder the growth of the continent.

Introduction of Trashy bags and collection of used sachet bags
Ghana together with some other West African countries is experiencing a trend in social enterprise of using sachet bags in the production of different rubber products such as trashy bags, wallets, messenger bags, tote bags, backpacks, purses and hats to mention a few.

Several benefits are being accrued from this new trend in social enterprise with plastic bag.

(c) Eric Osei

Creating Inspiring and Innovative Solutions

One significant benefit of social enterprise is the freedom to explore and create innovative solutions that can inspire change. Social entrepreneurs are constantly on the lookout for new and inventive solutions to problems and often enlist leaders within their field to assist in project development. Social entrepreneurs are rewarded by taking risks; thinking outside the box and looking for create ways to address problems. A clear example is the use of sachet bags for the creation of trashy bags, wallets and other rubber products

Creating Jobs and Income Streams

Social enterprise benefits the economy by generating jobs and income. In addition to providing jobs, social entrepreneurs also use part of their profits to fund projects that can benefit the community as a whole. This combination of business acumen and social awareness is a big lure to many people interested in becoming social entrepreneurs.

Clean environment and good sanitation

The collection of the sachet bags for recycling purposes helps in keeping the environment clean and healthy and at the long run help in salvaging the environmental and sanitation situation in the country. The entire benefits of social entrepreneurship with plastic bags, serves as a form of income generating activity to young people in the country and on the other hand help keeping the environment clean.

Finally social entrepreneurship can affect society in many ways. Re-using plastic water sachets is one of many examples that can derive from social entrepreneurship. A key element is that primarily issues are tackled which the current public and private sector cannot deal with using innovative and practical solutions for socio-economic and environmental development.

Eric Osei

Trainer Consultant MDF West Africa / Young Expert Programme Water

Enterprising for social impact

We want to set up a programme that supports young people to set up successful WASH enterprises. But what is already out there?

Curious to know more about the business community in Accra, Eric and I went to the social enterprise happy hour organized by the One Acre Fund and hosted by iSpace, a colourful space in the heart of Osu where start-ups or freelancers can work and use the computers, wifi, and meeting rooms offered (‘new ways of working’ for sure).

Three of Ghana’s more successful social enterprises were the main attraction of this evening: Global Mamas, MoringaConnect and Trashy Bags.

So what is a social enterprise you may ask? While the meaning of social entrepreneurship is widely debated (and justifiably so), a social enterprise distinguishes itself from other entrerprises through its emphasis on the social benefit, rather than optimisation of monetary profits.Social entrepreneurship is gaining popularity across the globe, mostly because social enterprises are more sustainable than those more traditional initiatives (i.e. charities) that do not have a commercial focus at all.

(c) WaterAid

The stories of the people behind Global Mamas, MoringaConnect and Trashy Bags were all kind of similar; they had come to Ghana for some reason or another, spotted an opportunity, and started. None of them seemed to have a background in business, none had difficulty accessing capital, and all of them truly believed in their product.

While these stories were inspiring, I noted a few observations. Firstly, I had hoped to see many more young Ghanaians keen to hear the secrets of starting a successful business – instead the international volunteer community filled the space. Secondly, and significantly, none of the speakers had had difficulty accessing capital, while this must be the number one challenge for young aspiring entrepreneurs in Ghana. And finally, the products offered were all quite ‘cool and attractive’ (with Trashy Bags being the edgiest of all!), primarily serving the international market. It got me thinking. What if we were to invite a local entrepreneur who runs a number of toilet blocks for the community? Would we consider him/her a social entrepreneur and would people come to hear his/her story?

Challenge accepted. Trashy bags have managed to sell trash, so surely we can also sell poop? I cannot wait to start working with the many young people in Ghana who are eager to see positive change and come up with creative solutions to address Ghana’s WASH challenges.

Lisa Freiburg

Trainer Consultant MDF West Africa / Young Expert Programme Water