A Business Plan

Most of us know about business plans. I love them. I'm always amazed at people who don't have them. I think we should have them for everything. Lots of times we set out to do something with no road map and no way of measuring how we're doing.

I have two very cool friends who've spent some time in Rwanda. On their last trip their goal was to help the people in their poor village change their economic lives. How would they do this? By providing loans. They had $5,000 to lend.

First they got to know the people.

Then they asked the ones who wanted loans to write up business plans. Forty of them did.

Examples: One man sells milk in the village. He travels on his bicycle so he has to make many trips back and forth. He wanted a loan in order to buy a scooter.

A woman makes coffee every morning in a crude pot on an open fire. She puts the coffee into a relatively small container, then walks around the village selling cups of coffee. She wanted a loan to buy one of those 40 pound tanks you can strap on your back that has a spicket on it. Then she could serve lots of cups of coffee before refilling her tank.

These sound like excellent business plans to me.


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