Learn from UNFPA

Today I got a chance to visit the Innovations Cafe at UNFPA offices off of Baskerville Rd. in Kololo. They have an event called learn from UNFPA, a one hour session that is held around once every month to share skills, experience and expertise from the United Nations Populations Fund team. The event is designed for guidance and mentorship and is in mainly a questions and answer format where questions are sent in about a week earlier to be responded to by staff. In attendance on the 31st of January where a variety of guests including entrepreneurs, students, professionals as well as representatives from the media fraternity. Perhaps the group with the largest team in attendance was Smart Girls Foundation. The topic for the afternoon was Financial Management. There were three major prongs or approaches that emerged when the topic was opened up. The conclusion was that at the heart of entrepreneurship is the desire to make money legally. The question that also drove the discussion was how to get the right mix of a set of ideas that make up everything about entrepreneurship. 

For Financial Management we found that the most important thing is to have an idea from which then emerges a strategy. This then leads to some notes regarding the markets for your idea then competition, where you have to establish where you are different and finally capital and planning,

We also found that without documentation the business is almost dead. With that we mean records keeping which in the financial sense means accounts. There was also an emphasis on the need to have ethical standards and for social enterprises to be very aware about their motivations. This is what differentiates between the social and the enterprise that is for profit. 

Finally the attendees were encouraged to take advantage of the networks that exist and to create some of their own. It was also stated that one of the most valuable discussions to have around the business has to do with the sharing of losses as responsibilities. 

The atmosphere was great and the setting intimate. Perhaps the biggest question of the day came from a team that was concerned about how to sustain social enterprises in an increasingly competitive world. 

Those who follow our work will remember that we have covered Innovation spaces before so this would be another addition to the list of places that we have visited. The model is similar to what we have discussed before when we tackled Pulse Lab Uganda. These are a group of hubs and spaces that are UN backed or at least HQ at UN based organizations. This would therefore give them a unique perspective in a set of issues key of which would be the overall goal of the larger group. In a sense, these would be the spaces where exclusive Innovation work would take place including the creation of Applications for mobile as well as work around themes like population, data, health, employment, maternal health, business and more.