Educate! facilitates Miracle Corners of the World (MCW) Seminar in Zambia
In May 2011 Educate! was contracted by Miracle Corners of the World (MCW) to facilitate its second community leaders seminar in Zambia. Educate! was represented by Mr. Solomon Kayiwa Mugambe, who facilitated the seminar focusing on two major themes: Business planning and Social Entrepreneurship.
Miracle Corners of the World (MCW) organized the Second Community Leaders Seminar in the Zambian city of Kafue, 40 minutes south of Lusaka, from May 23-27, 2011. The event brought together the leadership of MCW’s community center network in Africa from Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia to learn about MCW’s mission and operational approach and to develop workable solutions to some of the centers’ most pressing challenges.
MCW Executive Director Eddie Bergman opened the seminar at ¡Revolución! Mexican restaurant in Lusaka. Also in attendance were MCW Trustees Kabinga Pande Jr and Andrew Chilufya, MCW board member Anna Condoulis, and MCW staff member Khalid Elachi. “For most of us, it was such an impressive moment to meet all community center leaders for the first time in one place and be able to recognize that we all share challenges which we will definitely turn into opportunities and solutions as long as our efforts are combined,” said MCW’s Country Coordinator in Rwanda Jackson Vugayabagabo.
The seminar, facilitated by Solomon Kayiwa Mugambe, an Educate! Alumni Coordinator covered a wide range of topics including business planning, social entrepreneurship, innovation, marketing, sustainability, and assessing impact. Each participant wrote a business plan for a new social enterprise at their respective community center. Ms. Anna Condoulis linked the ideas discussed at the seminar to MCW’s actual operations on the ground. The plans will be shared with MCW’s Advisory Board for input and advice and will then be sent back to the participants, creating a new level of interaction between MCW’s leaders in the field and its leaders in New York. “…I used to here about a business plan and people used to say this was something very very hard, i even tried reading about it but failed to understand it, during this week Solomon has proved to us that its easy to write a business plan and we have been able to each write a business plan for our centers..” said Miracle Corners Tanzania Country Coordinator Abdu Mohamed
On the closing evening of the seminar, we took an evening cruise on the Kafue Queen river boat along the Kafue River where Ms Anna Condoulis presented Educate!’s first publication-Transform Uganda to all Country Coordinators to help them build on their knowledge of entrepreneurship, business and other lessons learned during the seminar.