With a final word on the project we would like to share with you that we are all very satisfied with the result! Back in the Netherlands we have presented our experiences at the TU Delft where also the DCE and Movendi were present. Pictures, some illustrations of the plan and the final shops, visualized the happy of excitement: two shops were placed in front of the houses of Piece and Mariam. The final report talks in-depth about the logistics and planning for the bread, explaining the function of the distribution point (the container) and the supervisor, and secondly the role of the bakery, and the relation of the members and supervisor.

Friedl (our contact, who is still in Ghana) has just signed the deal  to deliver the buns for the fast food chain ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken” that is going to start up in Accra! This means that the bakery (that keeps dealing with difficult problems) will still remain growing into a more stable position over time.

Friedl will come to the Netherlands in October, and we will meet with her to hear about the latest progress.

We would like to thanks everyone involved again, for the great help and supportto make this project a success.

For any updates or information, please do not hesitate to contact us!

Greetings,

Sanne, Arno Robert and Anne

Today, we are working at the Ballast Nedam Office in Accra. They have provided us with an extra laptop for the last reporting weeks, an office during workdays, and on top of that we have a driver we can ask for transportation. This has made it possible to visit and communicate so much easier, that the plans for implementation of the project are now arranged and executed in these very weeks.

Below, we explain what this actually means, on an operational level.

A few weeks ago, we were presenting and evaluating the final concept choice with the key people of Hope for Life, the bakery and the Lillian foundation. They responded positive, and are willing to become a part of the project.

Let’s look at the concept again..
[in a nutshell] Many Hope for Life members are currently not working are offered an opportunity to start up a small shop, selling the local tea and sugar bread. Since they often believe the start up of an own shop comes with high start up costs and much arrangements (they believe they can not manage on their own), we try to lower this barrier by offering a temporary shop. 

The (temporary) internship shop has the following advantages:
-          The shop is given at the member for a fixed period of time, at no cost. The member will pay ‘rent’ to pay for overhead costs. When the member decides to start up a shop of their own, after this intern-time, the saved sum of money is available to invest and cover the first start-up costs. When the member believes the shop is not a good solution, regardless the reason, there is no problem.
-          A depot is build centrally within the area of Hope for Life members of the branch. The bakery will supply this depot twice a week. The depot is a franchise of Hope for Life also, and open every day. 
-          All members collect their bread from here (send somebody out). The amount of bread they buy, is documented.
-          Members that have a shop already (many also) can collect bread here as well.
-          The bought and sold bread numbers are discussed with the supervisor (of every branch) who visits the member (and offers support whenever needed) to learn how to keep a clear overview of the financials and profit records.
-          The design of the shop is designed by the team. The shop has an added value for disabled people: adjustable height of the tabletop, convenient use with a wheelchair, a folding roof and table and easy (dis-)assemble. Two shops are finished by Mak-D metal works (with supervision of the team), and more can be ordered on request and then manufactured by Mak-D, independently.

So.. what have we done these past weeks?

Main activities of implementation:
-          Talk though the details, the advantages and disadvantages and the bottlenecks with the key people of the Lilian Foundation, Hope for Life, the bakery and branch members of ‘Mamprobi’.
-          Arrange the container (the depot) and find a suitable person to manage this depot.
-          Design, build, (extensively) test and redesign and build the first shop, followed up by a second one.
-          Reporting

The implementation consists of managing all activities in the right way. Osmond and Friedl have been key persons in this process. It is within our reach to design, build and test the shop itself on location, and explain to the members what the aim of the project is. Since two members (we have already met during the group sessions) are both considered suitable for the shop, we have pointed them out as good test persons also, as they will feel confident enough to evaluate the design and give honest opinions and feedback.

Furthermore, a proposal for the Lilian foundation (to receive money for the salary of a supervisor for managing the shops, some possible educational support and the depot) has led to a sufficient, long term budget.
Finalizing the entire system with all people involved, and proper reporting, is what takes up most of the time now. It is therefore, we are fortunate to have the support of Ballast Nedam during the last weeks.

Finally, a last word about our life here..

We have all visited the hospital –some of us more than others- but we can inform you now that we are all healthy again.
The football games are making this country more alive then we have seen before, and we cheer along like locals every time an interesting game is on, at one of the many drinking spots along any roadside. Some final trips and weekend plans lead us to the beach or other cool attraction!

See you in three weeks time,

Greetings from Ghana!

Robert, Sanne, Arno and Anne

Today, the report has been sent to all active partners of our project.

We would like to thank everyone that has been actively involved in the process up until now;
Friedl Nelissen (Hope for Life), Henk Kuipers and JC Diehl (TU Delft), Esther (DCE and Movendi) and Boukje (DCE).
Furthermore, Osmond (Lilian fund and Hope for Life) should receive special thanks for all of his effort to organize the group sessions with us. The Bethany guesthouse and bakery employees (especially Booker, Achille and Bernice) for facilitating these days, and help us to make use of the bakery’s facilities for making new product samples. 

As promised, please find the final concept that we will develop and implement in the remaining phase, below. For a full version of the report, please contact the team at makeitghana@gmail.com.

Cheers!

Sanne, Arno, Robert and Anne

__________________________________________________________________________________________

-THE FINAL CONCEPT CHOICE-

The final concept
Hope for Life members will be prepared for entrepreneurship (franchise) through an internship program in which they have the opportunity to sell local bread (baked in the bakery) from a table-top shop, in their own environment.
Additionally to the local bread, they will sell a variety of freshly baked cookies, which the bakery delivers the dough for. The dough is kept cool. The smell of freshly baked cookies is irresistible to anyone that has an appetite! The team is still investigating the details of the production of semi-finished products such as dough, and the balance between effort and profit. Cookies could be replaced by another product, if research shows better substitutes.

The table-top shop will be designed by the Make it Ghana team, and will function as a temporary internship shop. It will therefore be a mobile product, that contains storage space (one of the storage compartments is cooled), and a small oven for the cookies. For further specifications and details of the product we like to refer to the report.

Internship of app. 3 months
The main purpose of the concept is to provide an educational program for the members that are involved, with an emphasis on the internships fundamental aim: ‘learning by doing’. A trail period will lower the barrier to start a small shop of their own, and prepare them for their own final shop. The internship will provide the members with a transparent overview of the time, procedures, finances and effort that is asked of them.

Supervision & Support
Hope for Life will act as supervision in the first place. Secondary support should come from another, successful member that will be given the role of an ‘evaluator’. Every other week, the evaluator will visit the member, and by sharing experiences and talk about the franchise’s progress, the member is offered the freedom to ask questions and report the status of the internship. Exchanging experiences is a popular reason to come together, for members. This was one of the insights extracted from the group sessions. Members that already own a franchise are able to help an intern-member, can talk about their experiences at branch meetings, and in addition promote new intern-followers.  

Investment for the Future
The members will, in the time they follow the internship, save up for their own future shop. Even though this might be a small investment, it will stimulate the next step to start up a shop of their own.

The Role of the Bakery
The bakery will supply the members with bread every 3 – 5 days.

Bread & Cookies (if approved to be profitable)
Members will be supplied with local bread, and dough for cookies. This way, there is a stable selling product like the bread, and a value adding side product that will create an attractive and fresh image, by baking cookies. Variety in shape and additional ingredients (chocolate, raisin) will give the member freedom for a personal twist and small, comprehensible activity during the day.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Right now, already the ninth week of our project, we are half way though; the exact middle of the four months time that we spend in Ghana!
Tomorrow, our report will be finished and it will reveal the final concept for our project.

The past two weeks has proven to be a fruitful time, as many ideas and project directions have all been given a chance. We have first considered and prioritized the most important criteria for the final concept choice. To guard individual input, all of us have questioned for ourselves, what we believe to be the most valuable assets of the project: is it more important to make the business model of the bakery more profitable, or is the main goal helping to create work opportunities for Hope for Life members?

We have discussed the criteria that should weight the most, and prioritized them eventually in the order we all agreed upon. The final concept choice fits the ranking of criteria best.

The TU Delft coaches of IDP, Hope for Life, and likewise our supporting sponsors Movendi and the DCE will receive the full version of the report. For all others, we would like to present our concept briefly, on this blog, tomorrow.

Interested to find our more? Contact us!

We are glad to send you more information about the project.

Safe the date: 12^th of July
Our presentation in the Netherlands presenting the end result, will take place on the 12^th of July 2010. Detailed information will follow, but safe the late afternoon if you’d like to attend.

Group Sessions

The group sessions we have held with Hope for Life members, have led to much insights that contributed to the understanding of their lives. A short movie shows how we try to visualize the daily life of the members. Hit the playbutton below to watch.

More to come, tomorrow!

Greetings from Accra,

Sanne, Arno, Robert and Anne

Today is the very beginning of our 7th week in Ghana already, time flies!
This update will provide you; our sponsors, coaches and other interested partners or friends, with a short summary of the progress of the project up until now.

In the last update, we have explained the activities for the -first- analysis phase. Outcomes of the research for the internal and external analysis formed this first report.
An overview of conclusions and a (set up) project outline was the closing chapter of the first phase.

This draft project outline will not be sufficient without the second phases’ outcome, however, and this update will explain why.

The Concept Phase

The initial reasoning behind this project is focused on two main points of improvement:
- The bakery’s profit and success as it is one of Hope for Life’s income generation projects
- Creation of more work opportunities for Hope for Life members.
The goal of the second phase is therefore based on this second point, by striving for a true understanding of the current life situation of members of Hope for Life.

With the results of these main fields of research combined, the team is aiming for a concept that will, ideally, satisfy both these points of interest. Many ideas and possible project directions have already crossed our minds, been the subject of discussion many times. Yet, another big brainstorm was held this very morning, enjoying a (very Western!) Green Sunshine Salad, in the touristy neighborhood ‘Osu’ at this time.

By the help of a mediator, Osmond, who is a key person of the Hope for Life foundation as well as the Liliane Fund, we have managed to plan two creative sessions in these two weeks, on both Thursdays. Each session involves 5 members, to be able to guide the members individually (Osmond helping one member as well). The trust and good relation that exists between Osmond and the members was important to guide the open atmosphere.

Creative sessions have been chosen as the most suitable method to gain these insights of the members, as this will allow them to talk to each other and (partly) in their own language. Members know each other a long time, and enjoy chatting about life. Osmund acted as a translator, what helped to capture also the ‘chat talks’ in between the assignments, which held important information about the way they do business in their shops, or think about opening a shop. Doubts and considerations were discussed in every free minute the day offered.
The team was able to visualize and map their daily life, their family, their home situation, values, troubles, difficulties they face due to their disability etc. The atmosphere was free and unpressured, and all 5 of the members were motivated to answer and explain (even quite private) issues more detailed. English was only spoken with few words, but luckily we were informed about this limitation. We prepared visual orientated activities, which were explained by us, and translated by Osmund if necessary. Some improvements will be made to make next Thursday even more fruitful.

New pastries and rolls for the Ghanaian market?

We had also planned a little test for the members during this day that would help us understand –without them knowing- in what way new food products are received.
They were presented to them during the session: will they try new things, in a country that is so used to the small variety of food choices, or will they not take a risk? And what is perceived as ‘tasty’ and ‘not tasty’, and why so?

The bakery has given us the opportunity to bake muesli rolls (muesli-broodjes) and cinnamon rolls as try-out for potential new products, baking them the night before the session. We have secondly prepared guacamole and mango chutney for some other variations in bread spreads, and have additionally provided our guest with some more familiar products, such as the Ghanaian meat-pie and chocolate paste (to spread on Hope for Life bread and sugar- /teabread). The cinnamon rolls were received well, though not all of the members liked the intense sweet taste. The guacamole dip on a muesli roll was received very well and likewise were the local products directly successful on the local sugar or tea bread; even on muesli roll!

The next session will finish off the research for this project, and conclusions that can be drawn after Thursday will function (together with the former analysis report) as a base for the final concept choice.

Our primary coach, Henk Kuipers (TU Delft), will fly to Accra this Friday. We will show him around in this time, and discuss our ideas and steps to take further.

Before the end of April, the final concept is planned to be presented in the second report.

We will keep you updated in this same week with a brief overview of the progress and choices,

Cheers from Ghana,

Robert, Arno, Sanne and Anne

Furthermore, two members of the team have spend an entire night at the bakery to analyse and find possible bottlenecks in the baking process. Another investment that will pay off when we need to validate the feasibility of a concept that uses the capacity of the bakery before implementation.

We have elaborated on the analysis of the financial situation of the bakery. We calculated the cost per unit for every product and produced an overview of the total costs per month.

The rest of the time was spend on finalizing the report. The report consists of an internal and external analysis of the bakery. We have mapped al our important findings about culture, values, mentality and way of life in such a way that we have a good overview of all possible pitfalls and complications we will encounter when generating and implementing concepts. We have also formulated our own goals and vision and structured the different goals and stakes of all parties involved in this project and the bakery.

At the end of this week Baukje and Esther from the Delft Centre of Entrepreneurship and Movendi arrived in Ghana to visit all current DCE projects and to establish new connections for possible future co-operations. They paid us a visit and provided us with feedback on the first report.

Besides doing a lot of work we make sure to keep getting new impressions and experiences from this country. We keep meeting new people (in the streets, in the stores or at the Wednesday reggae night at the beach) and we put effort in spending time with them and get a feeling of how their lives look like and what their opinions are. Tomorrow we will be leaving Accra for the first time for a four day tour to take a look at the rest of Ghana.

In the second phase of the project we will put a focus on the members of Hope For Life. We want to gain insights on what their problems are, what motivates them and what will make them happy. Part of our vision is that we want to do more than just profit generation as earning more money might not be the only thing that will improve the quality of life for hope for life members. The goal of the second phase will be to get a true understanding of the life of Hope For Life members and to generate some concepts based on our results.

First we got a tour through the bakery by Friedl and we were introduced to the staff members. The next day we were invited to help out at the bakery and we spend the night making “bolletjes” to be delivered the next day.

We also got an invitation to join the chauffeurs on their daily route helping them delivering the bread to the supermarkets and shops of Accra. Bread delivery is a a highly time consuming job, as traffic here is crazy, and roads are unpaved and have surprisingly deep holes everywhere. Additionally, the city has a widespread centre: it is home to over 2.500.000 people! Joining the chauffeurs turned out to be a fantastic way to see a big part of the city in a small amount of time and to get familiar with the different neighbourhoods. Furthermore, it helped us to get a good impression of how the people of Accra buy their bread, what is available in a general supermarket or shop and what other breads are on display. The two chauffeurs drive a different route, so we split up in teams of two and switched the next day. To drive two times on a different day helped us a lot because we were able to discuss what to look for the second time.

So far we have mapped the locations of all the shops where hope for life bread is being sold. We have made a profile of every shop that includes the amount and types of bread they sell and also which competitors are on the shelves and how much space they occupy compared to hope for life. Based on the different locations and the knowledge we gained about the different parts of the city, we divided all shops into six different districts.

The bakery provided us with sales data from the shops of the past six months which we used to measure the performance of each district and every shop individually.    

Hope for Life has structured its cooperation with the local disabled by dividing the city in twelve districts. Every district has its own representative coordinator that organises meetings for all the hope for life members. All coordinators come together once a month at the Bethany Guesthouse to discuss what is going on in their districts and the future direction of Hope for Life. We were invited to join such a meeting and were introduced to all the representatives. We now have the contact information of all the representatives and most of them are really enthusiastic about cooperating with us and our project.

Besides all planned activities we have gained a lot of information and insights just from being here and witnessing everyday life.

Next week we plan on spending time with every representative individually. Today we will work on preparing those meetings and discussing on what we want to gain from them. We also plan on getting in contact with disabled people from each area and we will be moving to a different location so it will be easier to access different areas in one day.

Well.. three weeks to go, and then we are leaving!

This week our Integral Design Project (IDP) has started officially, so from now on this is our main project we dedicate ourselves to: time to make it Ghana!

We have contacted friends, family, organizations and foundations to explain the project and ask for a contribution. Much of the applications are handed in, and the first has returned: 2 big gifts are in! Berenschot (Consultancy company based in Utrecht) donated 2 laptops! We will be using them during the project, and leave them for the Bake for Life foundation afterwards. This is a very useful gift, as we need to report our findings etc. But these fancy machines give us the opportunity to design and print 3D images for concept generation (the laptops can run Solid Works).

Thank you Berenschot!

Furthermore, the project is becoming more real as it is time to arrange our “4 moths-new- homes”. Over the telephone we frequently speak to Friedl Nelissen, who is the head of Bake for Life, and our contact in Ghana.  Of course, we talk to the Ghana experts that already went last year, and look into the other project reports done in Ghana.
We are about to find out the ‘ins & outs of Accra’ now, so.. we’ll keep you updated!

This blog reports about our Intergral Design Project. A project that will be executed in Ghana, in collaboration with the organization Bake for Life. Bake for Life is a Dutch organization, linked to the organization Hope for life (founded in 2003). Hope for life was founded with the aim to provide an alternative method for earning a living for disabled people. As part of this initiative, Bake for Life realized these goals by setting up small bakery businesses, that have potential to become successful enough to run on their own. Several Bake for Life projects have proven to be successful. Our team, and our assignment, will be focused on the Bakery that is located near Accra, Ghana. The project will start in Februari 2010.

We will keep you up to date during the preparation and stay  in Ghana and about all the activities and interesting happenings during this project.

Anne, Arno, Sanne, Robert