An Evening with Debbie Travis

The Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy presents:  An evening with Debbie Travis, Canada’s biggest lifestyle brand and centre of a multi-million dollar empire. 

The Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy invites you to a conversation with Debbie Travis.

Debbie Travis’ innate talent for design coupled with her dry British wit has made her a beloved icon and international celebrity throughout North America and around the world.  As Canada’s biggest lifestyle brand, Debbie’s brand extends to television personality, bestselling author, syndicated newspaper columnist, Home Collection designer and inspirational mentor.

Hear how Debbie developed the 10 commandments of entrepreneurship that helped her go from leaving school at 16 to building a multi-million dollar empire in design, publishing, television and branding.

Learn how you can compete to win an internship working on an exciting new Debbie Travis branding project.

Admission is $5 plus service fee. Event begins at 7:00 p.m.
To reserve your seat please visit: http://debbietravis.eventbrite.com

WHEN:
Wednesday, October 5^th, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

WHERE:
Ted Rogers School of Management
Entrance at 55 Dundas Street West
7^th Floor lecture hall, TRS 1-067

SIFE Ryerson’s Projects in Kenya

Kenyan Business Culture requires individuals to establish a relationship with their partners before talk of business can happen.

Our initial goal in Kenya was to establish a relationship with the organization here and assess the different needs of this community. However, since we have arrived we have found many ways to deliver some of our existing programs to the community members, in hopes that there will be a lasting impact.

After meeting the SIFE USIU team in Nairobi, we saw the need to offer a resource center to local business owners in the city. SIFE Ryerson is in talks with SIFE USIU to expand our StartMeUp program to their campus.

After interviewing many community leaders, we have seen the need to educate the locals on financial literacy. This coming week SIFE Ryerson plans to teach 4 $tart $mart money management seminars to 4 different local groups of Dago, Kenya.

After reviewing the proposals that the family have submitted to external aid networks, we have seen the need to help them create a marketing pitch. SIFE Ryerson is currently reviewing the proposals and creating standardized pitches for the family. We hope that this will help them receive more awareness and the support they need to continue making an impact on their community.

After hearing the stories of locals loosing their homes and lands to micro financing institutions that have hidden fees and high interest rates we saw the need to educate locals on how to manage their loans and create feasible businesses. With the management of the community leaders, SIFE Ryerson has created a program that will educate 5 local businesses on basic business concepts and offer a small micro finance loan. Using a similar process to StartMeUp, we hope to be able to educate these owners as well as give them the capital to implement their ideas. The interests on the loans will go directly to the Orphanage in Dago to help them further sustain themselves.

After seeing the Odoyo’s struggles to sustain the Village’s Orphanage, we found the need to come up with a creative way to create a source of income. SIFE Ryerson plans to implement a sewing project that will create jobs for local high school drop outs and bring a source of revenue not only to the orphanage but the village as a whole.

Our plans to help this community are not only short term but also long term. With one week left, we are working harder then ever to complete as much as we can on site.

Until next time, we only asks our families, friends and supporters to wish us the best of luck.

- The SIFE Ryerson Team in Kenya

Entrepreneurship In Kenya

Academics have argued that Entrepreneurship is one of the hardest definitions to agree upon as it is based upon environment, opportunities, and passion.

At the halfway point of SIFE Ryerson’s trip to Kenya, we are starting to realize the truth in these academics words, how one size entrepreneurship does not fit all. In the past week we have witnessed, assessed, and interviewed various entrepreneurial ventures and we can agree upon one thing; Necessity vs. Opportunistic Entrepreneurship.

SIFE and StartMeUp Ryerson has plenty of practice giving value to Entrepreneurs in Toronto through our events, idea consultations, and resources. We had assumed because of our years of practice we could help entrepreneurs anywhere. However, we had never taken the time to notice that the majority of entrepreneurs in our process are educated, have regular jobs (that they are trying to get out of), and can easily find jobs if their venture crashes.

In Kenya, this is not the case, entrepreneurship is about survival.

Entrepreneurs in Kenya are doing what they can because it is their only means to escape poverty and make a living for them selves. Adding value to these ventures becomes a much more serious game. Here are a few we have met:

Kick it for Kenya – A youth soccer tournament that brings 13 nearby villages together to teach the public about general health and awareness of HIV Aids.

• Photo Sharing – We met three cousins, who grew up without any family or resources to fall back on. Instead of going to work as laborers in the farms for the rest of their days, they saved enough money to buy a camera, laptop, and printer. They saw Kick it for Kenya as an opportunity to sell pictures of the games and events right then and there to make a few extra shillings.

Rennan – The local market, it was here that we truly saw the power of necessity entrepreneurship.

• Local Women – There are one hundred women, each on separate mats selling vegetables their family have grown. All selling the same goods, each woman is just hoping they will walk away with a few Shillings in their pocket.
• Furniture Store – How do you ensure your giving value to your customers? How do you make sure that your customers are able to pay once you begin your project? All these questions seemed irrelevant. The owner markets his furniture by working outside. There are no display cases and no catalogs. Either way, he employs 5 people, all of which work 6 days a week and never run out of work.

Dago Dala Hera – A local orphanage that has had their funding cut off.

• The Odoyo Family – While running a small scale farm they also volunteer their time to build an orphanage to the children in the community. Now with their funding cut off, they are working to make this orphanage sustainable through raising Dairy Cows and Corn Crops.

Though we have spent only 6 days in Kenya, we have had the opportunity to meet entrepreneurs with different backgrounds, experiences, and futures. We are having difficulty truly determining what their needs are because each entrepreneur is so different from the next.

One thing is certain however, they are entrepreneurs not by choice, but by necessity.

We are still planning on meeting many more entrepreneurs with many more stories. Despite the challenges we have faced our team is still confident that we can make, not only survival but, a higher standard of living possible to all these entrepreneurs.

Stay tuned to hear how.

Dago Dala Hera – a Home of Love

7 hours later and we finally arrive in the village of Dago on Monday evening. Stepping out of the van we are immediately greeted by our host family and their friends. We may have just met them, but it feels like we are their old friends that have returned after several years of absence. We only have 10 minutes to take in the view of a landscape of farms, trees and a beautiful skyline, before the sun sets. A meal of fried chicken, strew, cabbage and rice is brought out along with TONS of Kenyan Tea. We are exhausted and head to bed with full stomachs.

Immediately after breakfast the next day, we are given an orientation by Edwin Odoyo, the co-director of Dago Dala Hera Orphanage. We are brought around the farm and shown the orphanage that the Odoyo family help run. The girls at this orphanage are taken from vulnerable home settings, defined as homes without parents, with one parent or with an abusive setting. Edwin tells us the story of how he and the volunteers at the orphanage often have to track down girls that are sold away to marriages at a young age.

After lunch, we call a meeting with the Odoyo family and community members to learn more about the village and how our skill sets could offer value here. After a three hour consultation we compiled a large list of different projects that we could initiate in the village.

Some of initiatives include:

•   Teaching financial literacy to the village leaders
•   Setting up a computer cafe
•   Reviewing the Orphanage’s sustainability plan
•   Teaching basic proposal writing skills
•   Looking into organic farming & green houses
•   Creating a median between locals and micro finance institutions in Kenya
•   Creating an innovate project that will bring income for the orphanage

… and many more.

Touched by their efforts to offer a safe environment for the children in Dago, we begin seeking answers of how we can help this community and create sustainable solutions to their current problems.

SIFE Ryerson is in Kenya: August 13th, 2011

August 13th 2011:

We’ve been in Kenya less than 24 hours and it has been a non-stop ride from the minute we landed until now. Stepping out of the airport, the biggest culture shock was the driving system in Kenya. Pedestrians first, is not a concept known here. However, Nairobi is a highly industrialized city full of culture and warmth. Jambo, a word that means welcome, is effortlessly exchanged between the locals and us. Patrick, our in-country representative, quickly tells us to drop off our bags at our hotel so that he can take us to eat authentic Kenyan food. Whilst trying to take our seats, the waiters usher us to the kitchen to kindly show us their food selection. Patrick laughs at us, as we happily dine on beef stew and a traditional bread called Ugali. He makes sure we are full as he warns us about our upcoming full day.

Of course our days in Kenya start earlier than Toronto, so in no time we are up and ready to have a full day of excitement. We start our day off with what would be considered a short walk for Kenyans (and a camping hike for us) to Java , the restaurant where we had breakfast. It was an adventurous walk, where sidewalks here were mounds of rocks. We could see the bustling citizens forming their sewage system, and were walking inches beside speeding cars.

After a filling breakfast we took a drive to United States International University, where we were to meet the SIFE team. The drive was bumpy, and slow from the new developing infrastructure.

As the doors to United States International University (USIU) open, you see a beautiful campus. It’s an open campus with a lot of pathways leading to many different buildings, tall, short, big, small, new and old. As we explore the journey of each path, SIFE USIU finds us. They had a very warm welcome with their humble nature; they really made us feel part of the SIFE family. After hearing their stories, and understanding their culture and projects we realized that although were from different continents the underlying needs were more similar than we thought. We learned a lot about each others team, and ended off with great plans of collaboration…and of course a big group hug.

This is just the start of something new, as the SIFE USIU team quotes, “The sky is just the beginning”.

Last night, we were unloading our luggage’s, excited for what awaited us in Kenya. The city of Nairobi did not let us down. Within 24 hours, we have made new friends, indulged in Kenyan culture, found like-minded entrepreneurs, identified a need within the community and most importantly made lasting relationships that will hopefully create sustainable movements, from Canada to Kenya.

Next stop: Dago Dala Hera Children’s Orphanage, a 7 hour drive West of Nairobi. With limited Internet access, we hope to update you soon!