Bwalya Maketo: You have the innate ability to actualize all that you can envision for yourself
[bctt tweet=”As a woman, you are capable of achieving all your dreams no matter the hurdles ” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] An English teacher based in Lusaka, Zambia, Bwalya Maketo is also the founder of the NGO, Zambian Women With Skills. ZWWS has a primary focus on equipping Zambian women with the necessary tools and resources needed to identify and harness practical skills and talents, thereby effectively translating them into sustainable streams of income. Bwalya holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts with Education from the University of Zambia and is passionate about women empowerment and entrepreneurship at various levels. She hopes that her efforts can contribute to mitigating the effects of rising unemployment in Zambia. SLA contributing writer Uloma Ogba caught up with Bwalya to learn more about her NGO and her plans for the future. In August 2016, you launched your NGO Zambian Women With Skills. Can you share with the readers what your organization’s mission is all about? When I initially set out to form this organisation, the underlying reason was the urgent need for the creation of a platform where local Zambian women could access the relevant resources needed to hone their God-given talents and practical skills. Through ZWWS, some of the skills women have chosen to harness include: baking, hairdressing, basket weaving, knitting, beading, public speaking, cosmetology, home management, home and event décor, flower arrangements, etc., which they can then use as vehicles of wealth creation. We currently have 30 officially registered affiliate members, of which 9 are serving as board members and two as provincial coordinators for Lusaka and Copperbelt province respectively. Our main service is the provision of skills identification and training to 3 kinds of women: (i) The educated/semi-educated woman who has a skill and is in formal employment but with no job fulfillment and would like a smooth transition into the business world by capitalising on her skill. She may also seek to create a balance between her formal job and a skills-based business on the side. (ii)The uneducated/semi-educated woman that has a tangible skill but no proper knowledge (technical or other) of how to translate that skill into a sustainable stream of income. (iii)The educated/ uneducated woman that has no idea what skill she has or which skill to harness. I like the idea of a subscription-based organization. In this day and age, it’s sometimes difficult to convince people to realize the benefit of and pay for services they may feel they should be able to access for free. How have you been able to hack this process and build a reliable membership base? At ZWWS, my role has been to make them understand this entire concept; it’s not so much about me, but about how each individual woman that seeks to join the organisation can capitalise on what we are proposing. The idea has been to make each woman see the platform as a stepping stone to actualising her own individual dreams and goals. We have two particular programs running which are specifically designed to benefit registered members. The first one is an in-house Legal Aid Clinic which gives members access to free legal advice except for court representation from our in-house lawyers as well as those that come through as volunteers. The second program is the Continuous Skills Development Program, which is specifically designed for affiliate members to stay abreast of changing trends in business (etiquette, advertising, customer care, personal/ business branding etc.). It also provides free knowledge intended for their benefit. The second program is the Continuous Skills Development Program, which is specifically designed for affiliate members to stay abreast of changing trends in business (etiquette, advertising, customer care, personal/ business branding etc.). It also provides free knowledge intended for their benefit. Basically, the idea has been to provide a range of enticing benefits that the women can only access by becoming registered members of ZWWS and so far that has worked in our favour. Can you tell us a bit more about the specific programs that Zambian Women With Skills offers and what level of impact you have achieved with these programs so far? In total, we have 8 active Programs running for the year 2017, namely: The Learn a Skill Program, The Learners Hub Program, The Mentorship Placement Program, Continuous Skills Development Program, Legal Aid Clinic, The Red Flame Initiative, The Fundraising Program as well as our Community Works Program. One of our most popular programs is, of course, the Learn a Skill Program. This program was specifically designed to offer a 3-4 weeks course on learning a specific skill which is designed to lean more on the practical aspect of the skill in question. The course also includes some theoretic components of the following: basic financial literacy, marketing, social media/general business branding, compliance, sources of capital etc. The practical information is usually concentrated within the last week of the training after the theoretic part of the course has been tackled. The overall objective is to accord an opportunity for learning to the vulnerable/poor woman who cannot afford to pay for a fully structured course. Facilitators are volunteers and “friends of the organisation” who work on a pro bono basis. So far we have had 20 women in Lusaka, that have successfully gone through this training with specific focus on cosmetology. You mentioned a mentorship program. Now, I personally think that mentorship should be a core part of every young woman’s life. There is so much we can gain from being mentors and from being mentored. Could you share with us how your mentorship program is organized, what types of issues you address and what the reception has been like among the target audience? Ok, so we have two mentorship programs that we are currently running. One is called the Mentorship Placement Program which has been designed in such a way that affiliate members, can access either short or long term mentorship to help them harness their specific skills. Our second mentorship program is our recently launched Red Flame