This week Kathleen looks at microfinance through progress with the Yogurt Project. “Microcredit has captured a lot of attention in recent years—often being referred to as a revolutionary mechanism for the developing world. However, it hasn’t worked nearly as well in Africa as it has in parts of Asia.”
“Now that we are in the stage of developing the distribution segment of this business, we are trying to obtain a license to sell our product in various stores and restaurants. However, before we can do this we must have our product approved by the health authorities.” Kathleen is one of four HBA students participating in the Ivey Heads East program working with a small yogurt business in Tanzania and Kenya.
Thanks to the hard work of the previous interns, the kitchen has finalized a packaging for the yogurt and is ready to expand its product into the city’s market. Today, we have surveyed a couple supermarkets in town to gauge their interest on our product with the new package, but received mediocre response. However from that we now know what information the supermarkets are looking for and ways to pitch our product to the retailers.
From Jackel’s blog: http://jackelheadseast.blogspot.com/
Four University of Western Ontario HBA students are spending three months living and working in Tanzania and Kenya as part of the Western Heads East project. “In 2002, the United Nations Special Envoy issued a challenge for Canadian Universities to take an active role in addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. UWO responded by creating a community development project in Mwanza, Tanzania, a highly underserviced area of Subsaharan Africa with one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world. The project involves students from a variety of faculties working to address the nutritional and economic needs of those directly affected by the pandemic.” From http://kathleenheadseast.blogspot.com/
Brought to you by KPMG Enterprise. Canadian entrepreneurs need skills and knowledge to build their business empires. Listen to Dialogue in the Den to find out more about the education of an entrepreneur.