Deepti Mathew on mission to create ‘street-smart’ women entrepreneurs in Rwanda

Over the years it has been proved that when you empower a woman who is already doing something, say a small business, to do it even better, the results can be immensely transformative.

For example, take a woman who used to hawk fruits in a basket on the streets, train her with business skills and give them a small start-up capital and you will have a thriving businesswoman.

Often it has proved to work. It has worked in Rwanda too. For instance, when the City of Kigali took street hawkers off the streets, free markets were set up to accommodate the street vendors, majority of whom were women.

Another good example are women in the basket weaving or bead art business. Over time, when they are brought together, trained and assembled in cooperatives, their skills easily become a source of income on which to survive.

It is in this spirit that Street Business School (SBS), an organisation that focuses on empowering women in vulnerable conditions with entrepreneurship skills to grow their businesses, was founded in 2018.

The organisation which is headquartered in the U.S., is looking to increase its activities in Rwanda through partnerships with different organisations in socioeconomic protection.

During her recent visit to Rwanda to attend the Women Deliver Conference, Deepti Mathew, the CEO of Street Business School, said that they are looking to introduce more of their programmes in Rwanda because what the country is doing to empower women aligns with everything they are doing.

The organisation develops training programmes targeting illiterate women previously living in vulnerable conditions, to become thriving entrepreneurs, lifting themselves and their families to a more vibrant future.

In Rwanda, Deepti says they have been inspired by the country’s efforts in promoting gender equality and women empowerment and they would be happy to contribute by facilitating the training and moulding of more women entrepreneurs.

“One of the most interesting things that we heard was when President Paul Kagame talked about how high Rwanda is rated on the global gender index. It’s in the top 10 countries of the world,”

“So, this is a country that already recognizes that women are a very important lever to growing an economy, to creating a population that is self-reliance and has the ability to move generations out of poverty,”

“Rwanda is the perfect country for us to work and to find partners to support partners who are already Rwandan organisations working with Rwandan communities, that we support and we train on our curriculum,”

Deepti believes that the most powerful way to ending global poverty is by giving a woman access to her own source of income through entrepreneurship.

“We believe that entrepreneurship is a life skill. It’s not just business skills. It’s a life skill because it gives you independence and urgency,” Deepti says in an interview with The New Times.

Street Business School works with 240 partners in 33 countries and Deepti says that they do not necessarily have to set up shop in every country but they rather work with other organisations doing the same work by giving them the curriculum and training modules.

She added that they train other organisations in different skills- financial management, self-confidence, using the curriculum and the organisations directly train the women using the materials.

The organisation was founded in Uganda in 2018, starting with women who were making and selling beads and today the idea of equipping women who never had the opportunity to learn business studies or have an education, with entrepreneurial skills seemed to work.

The women undertake a six-month course and by the time they complete the course, 85 per cent have already set up a business, are self-reliant and have the grit and self-confidence to carry on by themselves.

“We had an external evaluation done that showed that we more than double income within 12 to 18 months of them having completed the course,”

“So not only do they feel that ‘oh, let’s start a business’ but they’re able to sustain that business and grow that business and more than double their incomes,” Deepti says.

The train the trainer model means that Street Business School deals directly with organisations that are closer to the communities where those women live. They don’t train the women directly.

“The focus is really to make sure that these women feel confident and have the business skills to set up their own little microenterprises,” she says, adding that the women are mostly trained in financial management, market research, business planning and other entrepreneurship skills.

Helping women break barriers

Deepti says that most times women who did not have a chance to get educated will most likely have their business acumen suppressed by lack of basic skills or because there are traditions holding them back because they are simply women.

However, in many cases it has been proved that all these women need is some basic skills and they will do it by themselves.

A good example is Marie Jean Umurerwa, a businesswoman dealing in fruits and foodstuffs at Gisiment, who says that the training she got from a local women’s organisation helped her transition from being a street hawker to running her own shop.

“I used to be in running battles with law enforcement with a child on my back and a basket on my head. One day a man came and said that they were looking to train women on doing business in a formal way,”

“Others said he was an agent or a conman but I realised that I was not sustainable. One day I called the number that man left behind and I was given a date. I went for training. Life has never been the same,” Umurerwa says.

The tailor-made curriculum of the Street Business School specifically focuses on women below the poverty line, with low levels of literacy, no savings and basically no hope.

Some Rwandan organisations are already using the SBS training model, including those working with organisations dealing with HIV/AIDS, in refugee camps, agriculture and climate resilience, among other areas.

As her take home from the Women Deliver Conference, Deepti says that the conference in Kigali was an opportunity to recognize the amazing work being done to ensure that women are liberated from the challenges they face.

She pointed out that Women Deliver offered a platform to echo the issues women across the world continue to face from early marriages, to lack of access to healthcare and reproductive health services, all of which continue to hamper women empowerment.

“Not every country is like Rwanda, which has progressive and female positive policies. There are many other countries that can learn from this example,” she said, referencing Rwanda’s gains in gender equality and women empowerment.

Article Credits: The New Times