What an inspiring day in the prison! Today was the first day of our 3-day business development class, taught by the wonderful team at Kani, Katia, Akira, & Pipo.
Focusing on the question, “How to start?” when considering starting a business, the team opened with two key questions for the women to ask themselves: What do you like to do? What are your goals? Immediately I knew we had made the right choice in choosing Kani to teach the class.
Most talks like this in Peru are incredibly one-sided. Often they are taught by an authority figure who preaches at people and rarely are students invited to participate. There is a distinct knowledge divide, the teacher who has the answers, and the students who don’t.
Kani’s version of this class is radically different in that they believe the women have the answers and they are merely guiding the conversation. It doesn’t hurt that the team at Kani started their own social business and have direct experience in the topic, as well as experience being inexperienced. Why is this important? Because it makes them relatable and establishes a genuine rapport with the women.
During today’s class the women started a mock business, with ideas that came from them. First, Kani walked the women through key questions about their mock business: what products they are going to sell, who is their market, their competition, and what is the personality of the business. The women decided on a business selling jewelry (you can imagine my surprise at this!), for women and girls of all ages. They business’ personality? A woman, age 25-30, who is happy, flirtatious, and likes to dance. Next, the women worked together to picked a name for the business, Kori, which means gold in Quechua.
The next step was to come up with elements for the mission and vision of Kori. Again, Kani guided the women through a series of questions and together they created the following vision, “To be the first choice for women in Latin America that are looking for high quality jewelry at reasonable prices, while always innovating new designs.” Pretty good, huh?
Finally, Kani walked the women through a goal chart that allowed them to break down specific steps in a process to meet a final end point. This is incredibly useful planning tool and shows the women how to organize the steps necessary in starting a business.
What I appreciated most about the class is that Kani was realistic about the process. It wasn’t painted in roses they were upfront about it being a long process, with difficulties along the way. They also stressed the importance of building relationships and partnerships with other people and businesses doing similar work. This is very different than the typical model in Peru, where people take a more individualistic approach the business.
The best part of the day, for me, was after the class, walking with the women back to their cell block. I asked them if they liked the class and they enthusiastically said yes. One woman, the youngest in the class, said to me, “Before my mind was like this,” showing me a hard, balled up fist, “Now, it is like this,” she opened her hand wide, “and it is a lluvia de ideas coming from my mind”.
lluvia de ideas: literal translation, a rain of ideas, closest english translation, a flood of ideas