One of the highlights of my placement has been working with the Hope Givers She Butter Enterprise in Binaba, one of the most wonderful and inspiring projects that I have been able to support. It was only when I began to write my end of year report that I realised what an impact I've had on this project, and more over what an impact it's had on me. Here is what I wrote...

"During my placement, one of the most significant changes occurred through my work with a young female social entrepreneur, Linda Atibilla, project leader for Hope Givers Shea Butter Enterprise. Linda grew up in Binaba, a poor community in Bawku West in the Upper East Region of Ghana and is a recently graduated student from the University for Development Studies, Ghana.

Linda is an aspiring youth leader, who was in her final year at university when she saw an African Women's Development Fund competition in a national newspaper. The task was to write an essay about women's empowerment in Ghana. Her essay impressed the judges and she was chosen to win an award of $5,000 from the Hawa Yakubu Legacy fund. This fund seeks to encourage young women to take up a leadership mantle to mentor their fellow peers in their various communities. $2,500 was to be used as a bursary for her education, which allowed her to attend University in her final year and complete her Bachelors degree, and the remaining $2,500 was to be spent on setting up a project to benefit women in the community. Linda had always aspired to set up her own charity or social enterprise and so decided to do so in the community where she grew up.

Due to the high poverty levels in Binaba, the community faces many issues. There are high levels of teenage pregnancy, large numbers of school drop outs, low enrolment of girls in school, and large numbers of young people migrating down south to look for work. Young people's aspirations are low and poverty levels are high. Many travel to Kumasi / Accra (cities in the south) to attempt to earn money for education or for their families. When there, young women are vulnerable and are at risk of homelessness, falling into prostitution, teenage pregnancy and HIV and AIDS.

The brain behind the Shea butter project is to engage young women, within the age group of 18-25 who have not completed school, in the business to get a reliable source of market and a regular source of income for their livelihood. The project was conceptualized to discourage female migration in Binaba in the Bawku West District. The project has potential because in the community women are often the bread winners of most families and work to ensure its sustenance, thus with the project in place women will have a regular source of income to cater for their needs.

I met Linda when she came to the World Vision offices to request for some support. The Shea Butter Processing Centre is currently under construction, with a few rooms that still need completion. The project currently has twelve women at the processing centre. They operate manually, making the Shea Butter by hand, and use the commercial grinding mill in the community for the milling of the raw materials. By December 2011 they started processing the shea-butter although the centre des face may challenges.

As I am currently on a one year sabbatical from my job as a Volunteering and Community Engagement Executive at the University of Manchester, I took the opportunity in my role as CASO to build on my links at the University for the benefit of development projects in Bawku West. A large number of students at the university are involved in a volunteering project, SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise), which requires students to come up with enterprising solutions to social problems and develop projects to put their ideas into practice. The students will take a portfolio of the projects they are working on to a national competition in the UK in April 2013, where panels of top business leaders will judge them for their positive social, environmental and economic impact.

So I began to identify development projects in Bawku West that the SIFE students could potentially support in various ways, and conducted a SWOT analysis with the students to identify the most suitable project. As a result they chose the Hope Givers project.

The students are all taking Business / International Management / Finance / Marketing degrees at the University, and are from a range of different countries and backgrounds. They agreed to offer Linda support to build up her social enterprise and boost its sustainability. They agreed to do this over the geographical gap via email, Skype phone and the internet.

I therefore then began to facilitate the link between the Hope Givers Shea Butter Enterprise, and the team of students at the University. Communicating by email and Skype, I built the capacity of the students to support the Hope Givers Enterprise, and of Linda the project leader to receive the support that was being offered. In the last few months I have provided a lot of information advice and guidance to Linda and the social enterprise here, and to the students in Manchester.

The students have offered Linda support in four key areas: business, marketing, finance and research. So far the Business Team have supported Linda in completing a business plan, managing and developing her staff team (the 12 women who produce the Shea butter at the centre), and how to delegate tasks and manage the centre. The Finance Team has supported her to manage her finances, complete cash flow forecasts, and research and complete grant applications. The research team has given advice and guidance on market research, considering business to business selling, the pricing of her products and opportunities to use the internet as a platform for selling. The Marketing Team has helped Linda with identifying the various markets she can access with her product, creating a logo, branding and packaging for her products and looking at ways of diversifying the product for a broader market.

In addition, in November the students won the first round of a grant application they made with Linda for this project, and were awarded £200 (600GHC). They will be entered into the second round of the grant application in February, and if successful will go onto a final round. The grant also comes with business advice from a UK specialist.

Then, in the last month of my placement, I worked with Linda to deliver a workshop with 6 women from the centre. The workshop focused on the women's personal development through involvement in the enterprise, and Linda began to impart some of her knowledge and skills learnt to the women also. We also used the day as an opportunity to begin to gather some baseline data and information on the women's quality of life and standard of living in order for the students to begin measuring the impact of their support.

Linda has also since been accepted onto a Leadership programme for aspiring young leaders from the global south which will take place in March - May 2013. This is a huge achievement for her and a great opportunity."

"I chose this story because of the difference it has made not just to Linda, but to the women at the centre, the students from the University of Manchester too, and myself too.

Linda's confidence and self esteem has been significantly boosted by the support, and her knowledge, skills and experience are growing every week. Slowly, she is building the business, organisational and project management skills to make the enterprise a success. The women at the centre are also benefitting from the support, as Linda is able to transfer her skills and knowledge onto them, and support them to take on different tasks in the management of the centre.

The students are also benefitting from the project in that they are developing practical skills and using the opportunity to practice what they are learning on their various degree programmes. They are also learning about social enterprise development in challenging and deprived communities in the global south, and about the social, environmental and economic challenges that communities in Ghana face. They are also developing their problem solving skills as they attempt to support Linda despite the problems with internet and telephone connections, and the challenges of understanding the cultural differences in approaches to tasks.

I have benefitted from this project as I have learnt a lot about how to support and mentor two separate and very different groups of people, so that they can benefit each other. I have always had a passion for social enterprise, and her have had the opportunity to also put my skills into practice in the context of a deprived and developing community.

The advocacy element of this project lies in the social aspect of the enterprise, and the possibility for it to be a beacon of hope for other young women. Linda has many ideas for the expansion of the project to help other vulnerable young men and women and children in the community. Her ideas include expanding the centre to include a community meeting space, setting up an educational library and sponsoring young girls who are at risk of dropping out of school. Before any of this can happen however, Linda needs to build her project into a feasible social enterprise, which the students are working hard to support her to do.

The difference this project is making is important because it addresses many of the challenges that I have come to learn about since living and volunteering in Ghana, specifically in Bawku West. Being able to link students in the UK with an aspiring young leader here in Ghana, to work together on important issues affecting many young women in Binaba has real potential for impact."

"I chose this story as it is an area of my placement that I developed outside of my main objectives, and one from which I have gained a great amount of learning and satisfaction. As I will return to my job of at the University of Manchester in February 2012, I will be able to continue to work on the project, supporting the students and Linda and the enterprise from the UK side. I am hopeful that the ground work I have undertaken here will stand the project in good stead for when I leave and will be sustainable over time."

"The lesson / recommendation I can make for VSO based on this, is that I think it can be useful for VSO to identify young leaders that volunteers can mentor during their placements if they wish. It is very rewarding and can yield surprising short and long term results."

With love from Ghana,

Em

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