Corporate Social Responsability (CSR)

Events

Visit.org – Knowledge sharing events

We request participants to share from their expert experience with starting and scaling a business, it can be any domain as long as it is the professional expertise of the adviser.

PayPal 30 Nov 2021

Outcome – Visit.org / PayPal

From Visit.org
Your experience Help Entrepreneurs Overcome Challenges in Growing Their Business  has been requested by PayPal for:
Tuesday, Nov 30, 2021 5:00 AM Eastern Time (US & Canada) time zone.
PayPal included these comments: This is being hosted as part of PayPal’s Day of Service on November 30th.
Please let us know within one business day if the company’s preferred date or an alternate works for you, or respond with two other proposed dates/times.
This event will be hosted in English. You will receive a donation of $1200.00 per group for this event. The corporate partner estimates there will be 20 participants present. Once confirmed, you will receive a final confirmation email and a calendar invitation.
We can’t wait for even more people to learn how great you are with this experience! Thank you for being a part of the Visit.Org community!
Please feel free to reply to this email with any questions.
#MakeAnImpact

Visit.org | Delivering purpose for a more engaged workforce.
Annika Anderson, Account Manager, +1(347)673-9117, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007.

Topic:  Help Entrepreneurs Overcome Challenges in Growing Their Business

Date: Tuesday, Nov 30, 2021 

Time of the day:
5 – 6.30 am Eastern Time (US & Canada) time zone.
10 am – 11.30 noon Burkina Faso, Togo, Liberia
11 am  – 12.30 pm Nigeria, Sweden (winter time)
12 noon – 1.30 pm Zambia, Rwanda
1 – 2.30 pm Kenya, Uganda

Presented on the Visit.org website

Help Entrepreneurs Overcome Challenges in Growing Their Business

Discover how this organization’s initiatives have made a difference in their communities while supporting sustainable social enterprises.
1.5 hours, Online, 10 to ∞, English, Stockholm, Sweden.
 

What you’ll do
This webinar will focus on cross-cultural learning and will present three of the organization’s programs in Kenya: a table banking initiative in a village, a social business in a slum area, and research capacity strengthening at scientific institutions. After the presentations, you and your team will brainstorm possible solutions to the challenges faced by the organization’s partner groups. 

Agenda on the website:

  • Organization and Participant Presentations with Conversation Starter (10 minutes)
  • Presentation About Three Programs (45 minutes)
  • Brainstorming Session with Participants (20 minutes)
  • Conclusion (10 minutes)

Adjusted Agenda

  • We will start with a round of introduction 10 min.
  • Then the CEO will present HR&S and especially our work related to social enterprising 20 min.
  • The CEO will give the word to all HR&S team members and we may want share our experience and views on social enterprising from the perspective of the country we represent. 20 min
  • Then we compile challenges that we want PayPal to brainstorm around, as we guide them through the brainstorming together. 40 min
  • Conclusion 10 min
    TOTAL 90 min

What else you should know

  • This experience will be conducted over Zoom.

How you’ll make an impact: Social Justice, Economic Empowerment
Your contribution will enable the local coaching required to manage sustainable social enterprises.
This social enterprise operates in Sub-Saharan Africa and reduces extreme poverty in under-served communities through social enterprising. It also empowers research, innovation, and business through training, coaching, networking, and business loans.

Attending from HR&S

  • Cecilia – Presenter
  • Evelyn – Coordinator
  • Milohum
  • (Stéphanie, limited amount of time)
  • Moses
  • Aghama
  • Mardochee
  • Valens
  • Millicent
  • Elvis

We shall:
1. Finalise the list of participants.
We probably need the names, title, affiliation and country and the WhatsApp number.  And ensure our participants have zoom as well as try to have as good internet as possible.
2. Agree on outcome challenges that we want PayPal professionals to give advice on.
3. Agree on the expected outcome.
Can I please propose that we meet well in time, minimum half an hour before the PayPal people joins.
To team-up before the meeting.

Invitation:  Team-leaders  invite in your country.
1. RISE operations team.  Addressing RISE Centre as a business and supporting RISE-members. Accountants and PR may be interested.
2. RISE members
3. Network of social entrepreneurs.
4. Other entrepreneurs.

An expected outcome from the event is to link with new social entrepreneurs that can be eligible for the network and become RISE members.

By PayPal
Maybe
1. a digital payment platform that works across Africa and Europe?
2. accountability tools.
3. mobile app for funds and programme survey results

Reflections

Those who sign up for the event will be involved with setting the agenda.
20 PayPal staff has offered to listen to our challenges as social entrepreneurs in Sub-Sahara African countries and brainstorm on solutions.
It is a 1,5 hour session and it is up to us to ensure the opportunity delivers.
PayPal covers for the costs and for us it is free to attend.
But we have to ensure they also assess the session as successful, that the effort they offer generated outcome.
It is not to sit in and listen
It is about giving back as well.

Summary points from HR&S and PAY PAL meeting, 30 N0v 2021
By Evelyn FUNJIKA

Addressing the challenges of our entrepreneurs

What are the challenges faced?
1. Lack of entrepreneurial competency and lack of capital
Participate in village banking where a group of small business owners put money together which they can use to get loans and repay with interest. Works very well until someone takes out a big loan and they fail to repay leaving everyone else at a loss. Very difficult to follow up due to lack of formal agreements and difficulties with tracing the person. Most people may not know the procedure involved in getting their money back.
2. Difficult transition to online services
Closures due to the covid-19 pandemic with only essential services running forced people to turn to online services to sale their products. Increased job opportunity for online content creators. But this resulted in people selling or using other people’s content as their own (poor understanding of IP rights). Business owners who were technologically illiterate were not able to easily transition to online services. It also introduced the added cost of internet services.
3. Transport challenges
Selling products online require the seller to deliver the goods. The buyer and sellers need to develop trust. Use the pay-on-delivery model. The expenses with delivering the goods is borne by the seller. Sometimes after paying for the delivery, the buyer may decide the goods are not what they expected. If the buyer is too far, the cost of delivery is too high (can even be about 50 % of the price of the goods). Big companies have warehouses in different locations making it easier and cheaper to distribute their goods. Not an option that is available to SMEs. There is need to rethink how we look at logistics, warehousing/transportation so that the cost of deliveries and sending back packages can be reduced. Need to think of how we can overcome the
transport challenges.
4. Government policies
Government introduces polices which may disfavor SMEs. For example banning an online platform such as twitter will mean business owners who use twitter for their business will have to look for another platform to use, move their customers to the new platform or find new customers.
5. High interest rates
There are companies that give out loans but they have very high interest rates which make it very discouraging for small business owners.
6. Difficulties to transact across borders
Very difficult to make payments across borders due to high currency conversion rates.
Some countries may have ceilings for the credit cards so cannot make purchases beyond a particular amount.
Sometimes there is need to involve a middle man/ agent to facilitate the payment who may add extra charges and makes it more expensive to acquire the goods.
7. Aid dependence and insecurities
High poverty rates due to instability, conflicts and poor disease management. Donations have not brought development. Donors should target the local populations and not just the government. Supporting local populations can boast development.

Groups of SMEs

i) Local people with no/limited education
Examples are people in the rural areas who farm. These people may not need high income. They can pay back the loan but need coaching on management skills, entrepreneurship. Also need coaching on bank registration and other procedures.
ii) Graduates with ideas but no business experience
Need coaching on how to run a business, how to access loans that have low interest rates and can support their businesses.
Governments do have systems to support SMEs but these are not well implemented at local scale. May not provide support for start-ups.

Reflections and questions

1. Does Pay-pal work in Africa?
Pay-pal allows payment across Africa but many currencies are supported. Person-person payments have only just been introduced even in the USA.
It is difficult to come up with a global solution due to country restrictions so it is best to think of country based solutions.
2. HR&S raises money through Action10 to support the RISE centers.
Does it make sense for Action10 or HR&S Sweden to use Pay-Pal to transfer money to RISE centers in Africa?

It is possible to set up accounts for payments between HR&S Sweden and the RISE centers in Africa. It will be cheaper than using bank transfers. Payments within the country are also possible if the members/customers have Pay-pal accounts. Need to discuss further on how this can be achieved.
3. Can you transfer money outside the country using virtual cards beyond the country’s restriction for debit cards?
Need further consultation on this.

Comment by Cecilia

As a result of previous discussions, when that partner was focused on Kenya, this event has also been presented to PayPal as Kenya oriented.
That was not my intention, but it is ok, I will handle it and add our other programmes as well,

 

Danaher early 2022

PayPal – March 2022

Identify topics for the brainstorming

About PAYPAL

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. Established in 1998 as Confinity,[6] PayPal went public through an IPO in 2002. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year, valued at $1.5 billion.[7] In 2015, eBay spun off PayPal to eBay’s shareholders and PayPal became an independent company again.[5][8] The company was ranked 134th on the 2021 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue. Since July 2007, PayPal has operated across the European Union as a Luxembourg-based bank. The PayPal European headquarters are located in Luxembourg and the international headquarters are in Singapore. PayPal’s services allow people to make financial transactions online by granting the ability to transfer funds electronically between individuals and businesses.[103] Through PayPal, users can send or receive payments for online auctions on websites like eBay, purchase or sell goods and services, or donate money or receive donations. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account to use the company’s services.[103] PayPal account users can set currency conversion option in account settings.[104]

 

NARRATIVE

  • Multinational financial technology company
  • Operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers.
  • Operates as a payment processor for commercial users, for which it charges a fee.
  • Ranked 134th on the 2021 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue.

Unity Technologies Sept 2022

 Visit.org experience with Unity Technologies on Tuesday, September 13th from 6am PDT to 7am PDT.

About Unity Technologies

“The world’s leading platform for real-time content creation”

Message to Branches: “Dear Team.We trust that you are well.We are proud to welcome members of all HR&S Country Branches to attend a one hour knowledge sharing session with employees at an intentional company offering a platform for real-time content creation, Unity Technologies. Some employees at this company have agreed to offer a one hour consultation when they give advice based on their professional experiences. The topic of the session is “Help Entrepreneurs Overcome Challenges in Growing Their Business”. It can maybe be an opportunity to for example ask questions concerning IT, social media and content writing. And what else?

I will start with giving a background presentation on HR&S and then we have time for knowledge sharing, questions and answers.

The time offered is Tuesday 13 September:
1-2 pm Burkina Faso, Togo & Liberia
2-3 pm Nigeria
3-4 pm Rwanda, Zambia & Sweden (summer time)
4-5 pm Uganda & Kenya

Please let me know well in advance who would like to join. Thank you and wish you well.

Signing up for the event

  • Mardochee BIRORI
  • Sylvia
  • Kevin WERUNGA
  • Elvis AUSTINS
  • Alice DUKUZEK