Looking Ahead

2016 has been a year of growth for TWB. Our model has evolved and grown in the last year, and while it still resembles the original concept, it is far more robust and professional. We designed TWB to be a social enterprise – a baking educational service for hire in Rwanda. We manage nearly every aspect of the startup, launch, and operation of our bakeries in Rwanda. Because of the drive and intellect of our team, we have become experts in this field and our services are being sought after by large organizations, companies, and enterprising individuals.

Building on this momentum, 2017 will be a year of analysis. We are so close to solidifying our model. This may sound strange because we’ve been operable for two years, but like most startups, TWB’s model has gone through innumerable iterations. It’s like an experiment – you have an end goal (or multiple end goals), and you’re trying to find the correct, most efficient, most easily replicable means to achieve that goal. That’s where TWB is right now. We have most of our end goals in sight, and now is the time to test different means for how best to achieve those end goals.

A singular goal for 2017, from which our other goals stem, is to build lasting bakeries. As Julie Greene, TWB’s Co-Founder/Co-Director points out, “profitability means sustainability,” and I agree. We strive to code sustainability into every piece of our model, but we’re learning that sustainability tends to be a “product of,” not a “precursor for.” That is, critical thinking is a product of training and practice. And sustainable bakeries are (most often) a product of profitability.

So how do we do that? How do we ensure that each bakery we build or help to launch will be profitable without TWB staff there every day of operation for an indefinite period of time? Good question! That’s what we will spend most of 2017 answering. We’re close – we have robust projections and hypotheses for bakeries’ profitability, but 2017 will be the year to test these operational variations.  

Why do sustainable bakeries matter? This question contains multiple answers and illuminates many of our other end goals. Sustainable bakeries provide a group of women with consistent and growing incomes. That’s job security. And it’s also opportunity. Women can rely on their work at the bakeries and choose where, when, and how to invest their earnings. Sustainable bakeries provide suppliers (farmers) and buyers (shop-keepers) consistent business. That’s micro-economic activity that can self-improve and correct. Sustainable bakeries also provide community members consistent access to nutritious bread. That’s Good business.

The ancillary benefits that radiate from sustainable bakeries are motivating (to say the least) and conclusive. They’re what make TWB’s model not only plausible, but powerful. Powerful because we are using business – bakeries – as a medium to achieve multiple grades of social good. It’s like a chain reaction: by building a bakery that is profitable, we help to create a system that lasts as long as the women work and works on behalf of a community’s well-being.

Thus, 2017 will be the year to analyze and perfect the profitability of our bakeries. We will do so by taking a deep dive into our model – testing various aspects, building on what works, and boldly tossing what doesn’t. Our long-term goal is still scale – 100 more women trained and 10 bakeries in Rwanda – but to achieve sustainable scale (and real impact), we will first focus on profit. 

Women's Participation in Economic Development

The Women’s Bakery provides business education, life skills, and applied baking and nutrition skills to women. Through education and vocational training, women learn to source local, nutritious ingredients to produce and sell affordable breads in their communities. This helps them to change their life status from poverty and unemployment to permanent employment and becoming independent women.

Across the world women are considered to be the most important element in a family. They are multitasking; they give birth, take care of children, husband and family. But we can’t forget that they are also making a substantial contribution towards the process of economic transformation and sustainable growth not only in family but also in the community.

The Women’s Bakery has put into consideration women’s participation in the economic development of a family by empowering women and at the same time supporting them to play a vital role in country development through business trainings and starting bakery businesses.

We believe in women’s capabilities and we work hard to support them in being active citizens and helping them to become breadwinners in their families.

#womencan #womenscapabilities #womensempowerment

See, Think, Understand, Do.

“Some people see, think, and go…Others see, think, understand, and try to do something.”

These words were shared with myself and Markey over juice and beers at a local bar last week. We were meeting with a new friend—a soft spoken, thoughtful man who had passed by the Remera Bakery one day and was drawn in by his curiosity. As it turned out, he had previously worked with Peace Corps Volunteers in Rwanda. We immediately bonded over shared connections and visions for strengthening women and communities as he marveled at the unique, nutritious breads the women had made that morning.

We continued our conversation with him later that week at Champion Hotel, and as a mélange of live local and foreign music played in the background, I was struck once again by the way things continue to fall in place with TWB.

Here was yet another local champion—a Rwandan who had grown up in Uganda, sacrificed his own education for 6 years to allow his younger siblings to study, moved his family back to Rwanda, finally pursuing his own secondary and university education despite being years older than his classmates. He has since managed large programs throughout Rwanda, teaching youth, women and families entrepreneurship and savings skills. When he stumbled across The Women’s Bakery last week, he recognized the link between our bakery business program and the entrepreneurship/savings programs he has done before. TWB is a bridge—“They (groups) have a business mind. If you bring a practical skill, it can be a scaling up, an additional benefit to these groups.”

It is people like Amos who make TWB possible in practice. I sometimes struggle internally, wondering if we are doing the right things, moving in the right direction, putting into motion ideas and programs that will truly work and not just be another failed “foreign input.” But when I meet the Amos’ of Rwanda, I am inspired to keep moving forward—not because I am seeing, thinking, understanding and trying to do something, but because Rwandans are, too.