Education as Access & Power

At TWB, educational programming and training is at the forefront of our model. We don’t just employ any woman in our bakeries but rather those who have completed our intensive 200+ hour (now accredited) technical and vocational educational training program.

Education is access: access to a better income, a better job, a better life but most importantly, access to choices. The women we train, support and employ have a choice, every day, to come to work at TWB. To (oftentimes) wake up before the sun and work well into the afternoon, creating unique, healthy products for their communities, pushing through the lows of business and celebrating the highs. Education is power.

And you know what else is powerful? Witnessing our women transform from students to teachers and empowering a new group of women.

Enter Liziki. This woman is the definition of a rockstar. She has been with TWB since the beginning (2015) and works as a professional baker at the Kigali Flagship. She can bust out an order of 300+ sweet potato rolls in a morning, keep everyone on track to meet production goals and is just an amazing human being, mother, and friend. When our newest bakery, Gicumbi, was struggling with workflows, I had an idea: what if Liziki spent a few days with our newest employees and taught them her tips and tricks? The team at TWB has been experimenting with sending our more experienced women to train new, less experienced groups and the results had been positive.  

Liziki spent three full days at our Gicumbi bakery leading, teaching and demonstrating. It was inspiring to see her in her element and to see how much respect the Gicumbi women had for her. From my corner office, I could overhear them asking her questions from when to rotate trays in the oven, to what the ideal rising time was, to how to work faster. Prior to Liziki’s arrival, the production team has been finishing baking around 2PM, which caused them to miss market/daylight sales opportunities. After one day of Liziki’s expertise, they were cranking out 15 kilograms of bread before noon! Not only was she empowering the women, she was empowered as, now, a trainer.

As if I wasn’t already beaming with pride, for Liziki and our Gicumbi group, on her last day, Liziki gave a powerful speech to the women. Her exact words were,

“Sometimes the Kigali group, we had to wake up early and come to work and sometimes we stayed late but it didn’t matter because we we’re so proud of what we were doing and we wanted to achieve something in our lives. We (the Kigali group) are where we are now because of TWB and our hard work. Some days will be hard but you must have confidence, work hard, never give up and be proud of what you are doing. This is how you will grow and achieve more.”

I couldn’t stop beaming (crying) with pride and joy: for Liziki, for our Kigali women, for our Gicumbi women, for ALL the women TWB has the privilege of working with and for our work-our gritty, innovative and dedicated work. It truly is impacting lives and that is #breadpower.

No electricity? No problem, we can still bake!

Outside of Kigali, TWB works in rural remote communities in Rwanda, where access to electricity is scarce, and using any electronic equipment is almost impossible.

Does that hinder TWB from providing affordable, nutritious bread to its communities? Nope! 

TWB, in partnership with local welders, has engineered, a cool yet simple to operate wood oven model that is replicated across all remote TWB Bakeries. Wood ovens are the alternative to electric ovens, which are used more seamlessly in more urban locations, like Kigali. 

The wood oven is used for TWB women to bake the bread - the ovens are simple in design and economically sound for less fire wood consumption than a residential door chimney. 

All breads are effectively baked, and efficiently sold at affordable price to the local communities around our bakeries, and if this doesn’t prove the power of enabled communities and asset based community development, I don’t know what else would.

TWB has been able to show the world that remote communities cannot be left out of development and economic opportunity just because they don’t have access the basic infrastructure.

The Women’s Bakery believes it! What about you?

Knowledge Sharing at TWB

Last week, our Gicumbi Training Group came to TWB’s Kigali Flagship for a tour, so they could learn from TWB’s first graduates in Kigali.

The idea behind the visit was to see how work flows within a TWB Bakery and the baking techniques that are used. Also, our team knew it would be powerful for trainees to listen and hear stories and testimonies from current employees.

Two things that amazed me while I was leading this visit in Kigali.  

First, I was impressed to see how our Kigali women were confidently teaching the newer trainees. The second experience that was particularly inspiring was to hear testimonies that were shared.

To see trainees teaching other trainees – this is the true sign of empowerment. If women who were trained three years ago are now teaching the new trainees, that is a huge success and transformative milestone.

Kigali women were able to show to the new (Gicumbi) trainees how to make different bread products in different shapes. The Gicumbi women were also excited and inspired by the words of encouragement from women who have been with TWB for three years.

At TWB, we believe that transformation can truly happen once women can transfer the skills and knowledge they gained to their children or their neighbor.

That is now happening.  

One women from Gicumbi, Uwimana, said, “It was my first time to see the capital city of Kigali and it was amazing to see the women baking good breads and good shapes. If they started just like us and they are now making these nice products, then so shall we.”

That is #breadpower.

The Story Behind the Curriculum

TWB was founded on the idea – and belief – that education is irrevocable and can never be taken away. As TWB bakeries have grown, the TWB Curriculum Package has, too.

When our founding team was preparing for our first training, back in 2015 with the Remera group, I asked myself two important questions when compiling, writing, re-organizing, and synthesizing our lessons: who was the training program for? And, what was the goal of the training?

Using these questions as a launch pad, I have edited the package each year with a methodology known as “backward design.” If our goal is to empower women to be excellent employees at a TWB bakery, then all of our lessons, activities, and objectives need to be in alignment and working towards that goal.

And my, what a labor of love it has been to re-work our content and optimize our resources as much as possible. Curriculum design and writing is a honed skill, one that I have had with me for most of my life, particularly with my father’s experience as an educator for 30+ years. Additionally, I have relied upon skills I learned while in the Peace Corps and from creating curriculum packages for other ventures in the educational world: from school start-ups in Ghana to tutoring programs in Arkansas. Piecing together lessons written by Markey, Meg, and Julie, we developed the first version of our package, culminating in around 150 hours of lessons.

Now, TWB's curriculum follows outlined standards along four primary competencies: life skills, nutrition knowledge, business acumen, and technical baking capacity. These modules are integrated into each Phase of the Curriculum: Phase I (Basic Pedagogy), Phase II (Specialization Training), and Phase III (Bakery Soft Launch), complete with lessons that are both theoretical and practical so that trainees learn the content and practice it, too. We've added many new lessons that we learned are essential (basic math skills, for example) when operating a bakery on a daily basis.

Lessons are tailored specifically for learners who have not had an extensive history within the classroom and include activities that are culturally-relevant and culturally-informed.

Taken together, TWB’s curriculum holds nearly 200 hours’ worth of content to prepare a woman to work inside the bakery. Most importantly, our curriculum package is experiential, human-centric, and accessible.

Better yet, we are pleased to announce that TWB’s vocational training program has been approved by the Workforce Development Authority in Rwanda as a nationally accredited Technical and Vocational Education and Training program. Because of this, every woman who completes our program will not only receive a certificate of completion, but also a transferable vocational education certificate that will enhance her opportunities for gainful employment.

With accreditation, TWB is a viable option for women who cannot attend University and may not fit the mold elsewhere. We bring together vocational skill development with knowledge, exploration, and community.

This is the beauty of education and we look forward to the journey as we continue to innovate, discover, and grow with our bakeries. #breadpower

Zoomed in on Gicumbi

For the last 3 years, TWB has made tremendous strides toward achieving our milestones. Bakeries have launched throughout the country of Rwanda and the TWB staff has almost tripled. These are signs of success.

In 2018, TWB is focusing on Gicumbi as our next training and bakery launch site. Our preparations are on a good track, including developing the training schedule, partner relationships, and interview process for the participants. We will be launching the training for this group on April 23rd.

Gicumbi is in the northern part of Rwanda. Within this community, TWB will be working with Rwandans, as well as a diverse group of refugees living in the Gihembe Refugee Camp. The location offers a good business opportunity because of the local demans for food products. Additionally, those living within the refugee camp do not have farms to cultivate, so they only rely on the crops that are produced by the local Rwandans.

In terms of bread demand, our market testing has been positive. TWB has found a need for the breads in this district because most of the breads are brought from Kigali.

TWB breads use locally sourced ingredients and are highly nutritious, delicious and affordable. Among children under the age of 5 years, stunting levels were 36.6% in Gicumbi district according to the Demographic Health Survey in 2015. Thus, our breads can be a mechanism to fight against malnutrition and improve families’ nutrition as well as nutrition for the entire community.

Moreover, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, in coordination with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), recently changed their subsidy program for refugees in Rwanda. They are piloting a cash-subsidy system – meaning that each refugee, rather than being given her allotted rice or corn subsidy, is given the cash equivalent. The hope is that the cash system will spawn micro-economies.

Stay tuned and will be updated for more progress on this new opportunity arising…

This is #breadpower. 

Julie and Aime on a recent site visit to TWB’s upcoming bakery site in Gicumbi, Rwanda. 

Our Days Are Filled with Problems to Be Fixed

Rwanda is a country of opportunity. According to The World Bank, Rwanda is the second easiest country in Africa to run a business.[1] Registering your business at the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) can take a matter of minutes.

However, being a foreigner starting a business in Rwanda can be a challenge. Being a foreigner with no business background can be an even bigger challenge.

When Co-Founder and Co-Director, Julie Greene, and I registered The Women’s Bakery as a business in Rwanda in August 2015, we had no idea what a wild ride was in store for us.

Since then, we have had to learn the ins and outs of many regulatory bodies including the Rwanda Development Board, Rwanda Revenue Authority, Rwanda Social Security Board, Rwanda Standards Board, Immigration, and the list goes on.

The simple, most important lesson I have learned in Rwanda is that our days are filled with barriers, but almost every barrier also has a solution. Every day, multiple times a day, we need to craft solutions to meet the challenges, regulations, and broken systems that we face.

Let me give you an example.

When we first started filing taxes for our full-time employees we couldn’t physically upload the excel template to the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) online portal (which was required to process taxes). I waited 45 minutes for an RRA staff member to help me every day for a week straight. After countless hours talking to a variety of staff members, one was finally able to help me find the root of the problem. This was that the excel file was only formatted for PC computers and not for Macs. As a result, one of the columns in the excel was using the incorrect date format causing the whole document to throw an error when trying to upload it.

We have learned so many lessons in the past two and a half years and we look forward to collaboratively using our problem-solving skills to tackle the million more challenges headed in our direction in the years to come.

[1] http://ventureburn.com/2017/11/easiest-places-in-africa-to-start-a-business/

From Scratch: Our Flagship Story

Building something from scratch—now there’s a concept we know well at The Women’s Bakery. From our founders who built our Bakery in A Box model from the ground up, to the women in each of our bakery locations around East Africa that bake highly nutritious bread from locally sourced ingredients: we build things from scratch daily. It’s part of our culture: we push, strive, overcome and accomplish in order to further our mission of empowering women through business and education.

We are strong women baking bread... and building financial models, breaking into new markets, recipe testing, operating, organizing, and training. The list is endless.

Our most recent building project, quite literally, has been our effort to create a new Flagship Bakery: a space to propel our brand, display the ultimate success of our model, and sell nutritious bread. The Women’s Bakery Flagship is an inviting environment for Kigali, Rwanda customers to enjoy, interact and collaborate in while learning about and supporting our social enterprise model. It’s a space with higher production capacity to meet growing market demands, a hub for TWB product and marketing innovation, a centralized training center for future TWB programs, a single office location for cohesion as a bakery and organization.

It’s a model for TWB bakeries everywhere.

Building something from scratch takes work. It takes grit. It takes passion and endurance. But those are things that the staff at The Women’s Bakery embodies well. It has been an inspiration to see everyone put their hands to the challenging task of doing something we’ve never done before. But we’re doing it. We’re building it up from scratch: design, processes, systems, products. And it’s going to be AWESOME. It’s going to showcase #breadpower and we cannot wait to share it with you.

Coming soon, The Women’s Bakery Flagship.

Education & Nutrition are the Keys to Life

The Women’s Bakery (TWB) is a social enterprise that empowers women through education and business. A key component of our work is providing opportunities for knowledge gain, especially around core topics like health and nutrition. However, advocating for nutrition opportunities within the home and the community is a process.

TWB first promotes nutrition by teaching women in Rwanda about the value of the using natural ingredients, such as carrot, pumpkin, and banana. Ultimately, these ingredients are sourced in our bread products so that the community-at-large can access them.

TWB also aims to address malnutrition through our Nutrition Extension Program, where women can receive additional trainings on specialty health topics, like breastfeeding or child development. TWB assesses the need for health education by conducting surveys and data follow-ups in the sites where we have worked. If there are gaps in knowledge, topics, or nutrition-specific issues, we can work to integrate those ideas into the curriculum.

Through reception of feedback we have been able to understand that whenever a woman is educated, then the whole family has the potential to receive this education, too.

The idea of a country without high rates of malnutrition is desirable for us and this is what we are constantly striving for.

We will keep on educating women so that families can be educated.  We will keep nutrition at the core of what we do so that through education and nutrition, healthy opportunities can abound.

That’s bread power.