We spent the past week in Nairobi and Mombassa. In Nairobi we were able to practice our pitch to some contacts from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Acumen Fund. Our project and all its start up costs are a fraction to what the aforementioned organizations deal with when deciding to fund projects- a minimum of $500,000 in capital. We simply have appreciated the opportunity to meet these people as well as practice our pitch especially after our summer work!
The entire team except me- Tanisha- has left Kenya and I am left here to finish some remaining business and will be off on a jet plane this evening. I was able to visit our site for the first time since Becky and I left Nakuru for Nairobi and our mini-vacay in Mombassa. I was pleased to see a huge dump truck at the Polytechnic delivering gravel and sand! I spent the day meeting with Isaac and discussing the way forward and managing the project in our absence. The main bottleneck still remains to be the mysterious KRA pin which is basically our registration with the Kenyan IRS. We are learning to maneuver around this irritating constraint and hope and pray it will be processed by Aug 15th.
This summer has definitely been eventful! Establishing an enterprise has proved to be quite exciting! We weren’t quite sure what the outcome would be when we embarked on this journey-- now we are leaving and fully intend to return with lifelong relationships and a manufacturing facility here in Kenya. For some of those inquiring minds out there, Becky and I (Tanisha) fully intend to come back in January to see how this real pilot project is going.
Thanks for reading this blog, we hope to keep it updated as we pursue this project and try to get something moving while in the US.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment