Vuyiswa Ndoyiyana joined Love to Give’s Citizen Connect programme in January this year. While on this programme, she has been working in our vegetable garden and attending a variety of workshops covering Parenting, Book Sharing, Plumbing, Gardening and Health. She signed up for the Micro-MBA course, a small business development course we run with the support of Project Education in Sweden. The Micro-MBA course comprises 8 simple workbooks which are based on what works at grassroots in Micro and Small businesses.
Vuyiswa has a small business sewing traditional dresses and so was a good candidate for the course. When she started the course, it was immediately noticeable that she was battling to see her workbooks and her calculator. We wondered how she was managing to sew with such bad eye sight. Leigh Fourie from Vision in Focus kindly tested her eyes and gave her new glasses. The difference in her sight when she got her new glasses was remarkable.
As part of the business course, we work closely with each participant on their product costings. When we worked with Vuyiswa to establish the cost of her dresses, we discovered that she was selling her dresses below cost. The key problem was that she was paying too much for her fabric. The market in Kayamandi is very price conscious so she knew she wouldn’t sell any dresses if she put her prices up. This was a huge shock to her but she wasn’t defeated. She decided to source fabric directly from the manufacturer in future and also to make some different products. She came to class the following week with a beautifully made traditional Xhosa apron that used cheaper materials and could be made more affordably.
