Week 14. Meeting the local entreprenurs

Meeting different types of entrepreneurs!

When Dorothy and Edward told us they are arranging interviews for us, we did not expect to meet four of them in one day!

Visiting the entrepreneurs!

For each, we had an interview for an hour. We interviewed about their daily life and job in general first. Later, we could bring up more specific topic about the consultation and our concept. Let me introduce shortly about these very different types of entrepreneurs.

Grace

Introduced by Dorothy, the first place we went was the pharmacy of Grace. She has 8 years of experience as a VHT and has become an entrepreneur since last year. She has her own pharmacy and the customer comes to her. Grace is proud of the fact that she was chosen by the community to be a village health worker. She is eager to learn more about healthcare so that she can contribute more on her community. She helped us get a better understanding of life as an entrepreneur.

At Grace's pharmacy

Andrew

When the interview with Grace was almost finished, Andrew came to say hello. We could see right away that he is very energetic and active. His interview started with his introduction that he was one of the very first entrepreneurs to be trained in Uganda. He was happy that he could learn business and communication skills to run his own sustainable business. As a VHT, he was not paid for his work. But now he could make profits and support his family. He had come up with many strategies to sell more products in the community.

Conversation with Andrew in the garden

Mary

Then, we moved to the next location. Mary and one other entrepreneur were waiting for us there. Mary was not comfortable with speaking English so it was a challenge to communicate with her but she also shared some of her knowledge and experience. She has been a VHT for 6 years now. She is very happy to use the tablet especially to educate about sanitation, hygiene and family planning.

John

John is dedicated to community health care. He was more interested in gaining more knowledge to help the people in village than making sales. He enjoys his work that he has a opportunity to learn and meet more people. He was happy to meet people from outside his community which encourages him to make more efforts to improve.

Interview with John

From the interviews, it was interesting to hear the different perspectives and values each entrepreneur had towards their work and community. With these insights, we made the first iteration of our concept.

Skype Meeting with the Netherlands

Another exciting thing was to have a Skype meeting with our team in the Netherlands! We updated them about what we have been up to. They were excited to travel to Uganda and also do field research. Currently, they were finalising the second report and getting ready to fly to Uganda.