Winning in Yemen, expanding in Pakistan - social transformation
Leaping closer towards our four digit milestone!
Peace through prosperity's flagship programme to affect social transformation, our mini-MBA programme reached 906 micro entrepreneurs as of 5th October 2019.
We got to know an awe inspiring trio of ladies in Sanaa and established our first chapter outside Pakistan, in Sanaa, Yemen. Yusra and her team are a formidable trio with whom we align on our vision for accelerating much needed transformation in society.
We joined forces, experimented, stumbled and are learning how best to support a local NGO in Karachi take on and run with our programmes completely on their own. With Ihsaas Trust we achieved in 4 months what we could not with one of the most established NGOs of Karachi in over two years. We put it down to being aligned on the principle of stopping to plan and starting to act, Shahzeb and his team at Ihsaas Trust are walking the walk with us! Thank you.
Peace Through Prosperity’s own team in Karachi, Abdul Rasheed, Amaad and Imran are kicking names and taking a** too! Peace Through Prosperity is now entrenched in Ibrahim Hyderi, focusing on the many micro-communities that collectively make up the near million people that live in Ibraheem Hyderi.
Now some specifics from our mini-MBA cohorts in Sanaa and Karachi
In Sanaa, Yemen:
In July 2019 we started our mini-MBA programmes in Sanaa, initially we experimented with a local NGO and our own team but a month in to it we decided to exclusively run the mini-MBA programme through our own Chapter in Sanaa. Yusra, Sarah and Marram have and continue to do amazing work and are delivering social transformation, and continue to raise the bar on themselves month on month! (شكرا جزيلا الاخوات).
Between July 2019 and September the team delivered three mini-MBA cohorts (one every month as planned), completed four group workshops in Sanaa and this is what they have to say in their own words, Sarah Sallam, one of the Sanaa team member said:
“…impact of this war forced people specially women to create small projects/businesses, to be self-reliant and help meet the basic-requirements of living, but they go about it randomly without proper management or strategy. The mini-MBA programme is changing that completely.”
"It has not all been easy for our participants either, they have faced some resistance from their family but after discussing the programme with their family, they have received the support of their family to be involved in Peace Through Prosperity's programmes that can help and prove useful to our society under this situation.” Added Sarah.
Their self organisation skills are second to none! The local chapter has set up it’s own Vimeo channel (love it) and you can access their local testimonials here on Vimeo.
As for the impact in the past four months, lets take Cohort-001 of fifteen female micro-entreprneurs as our working example here; Cohort-001 participants have completed three of the four scheduled workshops.
Though this is ‘little data’ and we’re waiting on the six month workshop to see what the trend line looks like over the medium term, the general trend is as expected (from past patterns) and is positive, it follows the ‘J’ curve and it’s trending upward!
Our Sanaa Chapter lead Yusra Hussein said:
“This is a great result, Yemen is at war, yet what we are seeing here is evidence of local economy’s recovery. The bsuinesses our participants run much like the wider economy suffer from war, interuppted supply chain because of the blockades and wild currency fluctuations.”
“The work we are doing in enabling and empowering micro-entrepreneurs, particulary women is critical, it is critical for our future to enable our entrepreneurs with skills that give them the right tools to deal with disruption, which is the norm on a daily basis.” added Yusra Hussein.
Averages across the 15 participants of Cohort 001
Taking a closer look, we have the likes of Rehab, who sells clothes and has seen a 400% increase in her profitability over the three months compared to her baseline revenue. Or Faten, who has a Cafe and has seen a 154% increase in profitability since she expanded her offerings at her Cafe post mini-MBA. There is Wehad, selling incense and perfumes and despite a single digit drop in revenues fro her baseline has recorded profitability growth of 184%, she now sources her raw materials wholesale and pays a fraction for them now.
In Karachi, Pakistan:
Ihsaas Trust assist out of work individuals to start up their own micro-enterprises through micro-loans as well as facilitating their access to quality produce through an established supply chain. With Ihsaas Trust, Peace Through Prosperity has a natural fit, Ihsaas mobilise people to help themselves, provide them finance and infrastructure to start their transformative journey and with Peace Through Prosperity’s mini-MBA programme they are now providing would be micro-entrepreneurs with means to make the best possible start to their journey.
In Karachi, Ihsaas Trust ran their first totally independent mini-MBA programme in Orange town with 55 participants in the first week of October 2019.
Ihsaas Trust will be running one cohort every month and we’ll be sharing the progress of their cohorts over time. This for us is our first true scaling experiment with a partner who wants to do so in earnest! Together we’ll reach more micro-entrepreneurs in need of empowerment to build a better future for themselves, their family and community.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for your time. I invite and encourage you to explore Peace Through Prosperity's approach, reach out and learn how you too can take our open source (free to use) programmes and implement them in your own community.
