College of Education and Human Development Assistant Professor Tiffany Young and Washoe County School District Equity and Diversity Specialist KaPreace Young traveled to Lusaka, Zambia in October 2022 to participate in the Washington Mandela Fellowship for Young African Leaders Exchange. The United States Department of State, in partnership with IREX, sponsored the trip of American participants to sub-Saharan Africa to conduct skills workshops for Mandela Washington Fellowship alumni.
The project facilitated workshops in Zambia for a network of women microentrepreneur mentors and their trainees in 2021, jointly conducted by Inuta Cheta and Tiffany Young, presented by KaPreace Young, supported by IREX and Virtual Learning Partners. Americans – Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund.
“Our target beneficiaries are women micro-entrepreneurs who have attended entrepreneurship workshops trained directly by IOTA and myself, as well as women who have been trained by women who have completed our program,” said Tiffany Yang.
The project conducted five workshops involving forty participants in Lusaka and Chongwe, the latter two being rural communities.
“Our target beneficiaries are women micro-entrepreneurs who have attended entrepreneurship workshops trained directly by IOTA and myself, as well as women who have been trained by women who have completed our program,” said Tiffany Young.
The project conducted five workshops involving forty participants in Lusaka and Chongwe, the latter two being rural communities.
“The first outcome of this project is to increase the number of women micro-entrepreneurs who have the knowledge of soft skills that complement their business skills to help them succeed in their businesses,” said Tiffany Yang. The second outcome of this project is to increase the number of women who can train other micro-entrepreneurs in soft skills to help other enterprises succeed in their communities.
These workshops helped 200 women micro-entrepreneurs in Zambia who received business training with soft skills to improve their business skills and improve the resilience of their micro-enterprises against COVID-19. During these programs, women were taught practical business resilience to stay afloat during the pandemic.
“This project selected 200 women who have completed entrepreneurship training courses and their beneficiaries,” said Tiffany Yang. The virtual workshops of 2021 chose women who have a circle between 20 and 50 people in their social groups; For example, religious groups, community banking groups and women’s leagues. “For community groups, we calculate that the impact will be between 4,000 and 10,000 people.”
After conducting a post-training evaluation, the results showed that 95 percent of the business lessons resonated with the participants. However, several lacked confidence in implementing soft skills to strengthen their businesses and ultimately ensure the survival of their microenterprises during the pandemic.
Tiffany Young and Caprice Young worked alongside Inuta Cheta, who is the founder of She Entrepreneur, which was founded in 2016. It is the largest organization of women micro-entrepreneurs in Zambia. Chetta has strong ties to her community, which has enabled her and the team to grow the organization into a network of over 4,000 women micro-entrepreneurs.
Tiffany Young and her family were the first Americans to open their home to Cheta in 2018 by participating in the Mandela Washington Fellowship Young African Leaders Initiative program at the University of Nevada, Reno, led by Karina Black with the Northern Nevada International Center. During his time at Reno, he was involved in the formation process of the Shades of Queening startup, of which KaPreace Young is a co-founder.
Tiffany Yang and Inota Cheta collaborated for the first time on African soil in 2018 and received the first mutual award from IREX. The two trained more than 100 student teachers in the capital city, Lusaka, and provided rural outreach to more than 40 teachers in Chuma. The calculated impact of their work is over 2,000 coaches.
In 2021, in response to the pandemic, Tiffany Yang and Inuta Cheta sought to help build resilience against Covid-19 for women micro-entrepreneurs, who were most affected by the pandemic and most of whom made their livelihoods from had given up KaPreace Young was also invited to present a workshop.
“Traveling internationally and working with women seeking to learn and grow has profoundly influenced my global cultural worldview,” said Caprice Young. Not only was I able to share my knowledge and experience, but I also learned a lot.”
Tiffany Young volunteered in a project sponsored by IREX to train 100 women online. The program was a huge success with over 600 applicants.
In order to address the unmet need, the duo co-funded and received the CDAF award four months later, in November 2021. This allowed the duo to virtually train 200 women micro-entrepreneurs out of 950 women applicants. Program participants went on to create informal social groups in their rural communities to promote peer-to-peer training for women micro-entrepreneurs. The estimated impact of this effort in the next two years is 10,000 women entrepreneurs.
Inuta Chetta and Tiffany Young continue to support a network of 300 micro-entrepreneurs trained in 2021. Women have created community groups that we will continue to support in the years to come.
