Holistic Training
TWB doesn’t just train women to bake bread and keep track of cost of goods and inventory (though if you’d sat through the last few weeks, you might think all we did was cost of goods and inventory!). The TWB Training Curriculum covers all the essentials for starting, managing, and sustaining a bakery business, which does include quite a bit of number crunching, but our curriculum also includes valuable life skills lessons.
What exactly are “life skills”? Well, pretty much just what they sound like, skills that help us to operate more effectively, both in our individual lives and in society at large. Plenty of “life skills” are learned as we grow up, like sharing and respecting others. Others can require a little more training, thought, or practice to develop, and these are the ones TWB includes in our training seminars.
This week, we explored Planning Ahead & Time Management and Problem Solving. Women arrived Thursday morning to two mysterious stations, each with a pile of sand, a pile of small rocks, a cup of water, and an empty cup. In groups, the women were challenged to fit as much of each material as they could into the empty cup. Laughs ensued, everyone got their hands dirty, and we came out with a very close near-tie between the groups. Without getting too detailed, the order in which the cup is filled drastically changes how much of each material you can fit inside. If you start with water, almost nothing else will fit. If you start with sand, very few rocks will fit. If you start with rocks, then fill sand in around them, and then pour water into all the remaining cracks, you will use the most of your materials. Apply this to how we plan our days, and then further to how we can plan bakery operations to maximize efficiency and productivity…Life skills!
Doreen then taught a great lesson on problem solving, and the women brainstormed all kinds of potential problems they could run into while working at the bakery, and possible solutions. This week, they will be acting out some of these problem/solution scenarios—stay tuned!
