Our approach

We focus our support on business ideas that will deliver meaningful benefits to a wider community as well as the business owner. There are three criteria for our partnership:

  1. the business must be led by someone whose motivation is for the common good as well as their own
  2. the business must tangibly help the community improve their well-being, cohesion and stability
  3. the businesses must be set up and managed for long term sustainability

Business people with this community perspective live in Kivu as much as they do anywhere else, maybe more so! However, the hand to mouth existence means that for most people it’s hard enough to get through the day, let alone think about tomorrow. Most people have to do casual work or operate small shops or market stalls, or repair things or run moto taxis.

Only a few people have the capacity and circumstance needed to build for tomorrow, to see the problems and suffering and to commit to helping long-term. Perhaps they already have a small business and wish to expand. Perhaps they have an idea and the energy to make it work. Perhaps they lead one of the many co-operatives.

We get to know these people and their business and ambitions. If she or he is also working towards the three criteria and if they would like our help, then we commit to a relationship of at least one or more usually two or three years.

Our offer includes

We are very lucky to be able to draw on years of management experience in the design industry and also on the diverse realities of fund raising and farming. Plus we have a working relationship with Dragonfly Coaching for Life  and the good fortune to have benefited from tools like Insight and books like the Seven Habits.

Of course we do not impose these things on people or think that they are appropriate regardless of the situation. We have them at our disposal and we can offer the essential points when relevant and in an understandable way.

Most of all we can draw on design methodologies, in particular the service design methodologies practiced by Fjord and others, which tell us to anchor a solution to real needs and align it to meaningful opportunity.

Needs exist at all levels in Kivu and many of them require the resources of large NGO’s rather than an incubator like ourselves. So we have to be clear about our value, which is:

At these two points we offer value - and in so doing we hope we can create opportunity and benefit for the wider Kivu community.