The mission ends, and new adventures begin

Farah, at right, translating for Dr. Howard Reed, Director of Dubai Women's College.

The BART Associates, the faculty and staff of Dubai Women's College and the Bpeace volunteers marking the completion of BART Start 2007.

Guljan, the Associate’s choice for valedictorian, spoke of hope and the crowd at the Finale event to mark the end BART Start cheered with joy.

Amid certificates, speeches, gifts, and enough photo flashes that would make most paparazzi proud, the faculty and staff of DWC and the team of Bpeace volunteers shared optimism for the future of Afghanistan based on the tenacity of the BART Associates we saw this week.

The Bpeace team all agrees that this group of Associates significantly raises the bar for Afghan businesswomen. The BARTies are professionals, operating substantial businesses, in some cases with hundreds of workers. Several of them have more demand than capacity for their services and products. Not bad for a developing economy.

In the hours leading up to the close of this mission, the Associates all made pledges to allocate some of the jobs they create to idle or disadvantaged groups—including the drug affected. This, they agree, is the connection between their businesses and peace. More jobs mean less violence. They worked with their Bpeace partners on Forward Plans to plot their business goals over the next 9 months. They reviewed an extensive list of Bpeace consulting services and selected which services they and their Bpeace partner felt would most help them achieve their goals.

We are envisioning their trip to the US in October 2008. Habiba, Mariam, Guljan and Zainul will spend their time in Maine working at various food processing businesses. Mobina will apprentice at a radio station in Pennsylvania. We don’t know where our soccer ladies—Taj, Ferishta and Azziza—will apprentice yet—there are no soccer ball manufacturers in the US. Quiet Fatima will no doubt surf at a couple of carpentry and furniture manufacturing companies. Hamida, who is wrestling on how to evolve her training consultancy, will be an asset wherever we place her. Zeba is a challenge with her fuel importing and distribution company. And Parwana, who exudes confidence and drive, will be an easy match at any major commercial printer.

All Bpeace Associates are fast runners. Literate, intuitively business savvy and already running businesses. Bpeace is an accelerant. This week the Bpeace team and Dubai Women’s College put a little wind at the backs of the BARTies. Conditions in Afghanistan make it a rough road for them. We have faith. They have hope.

In the News

In addition to everything else the Dubai Women’s College did, they also rolled out the publicity machine.

Toni and Parwana were interviewed on a morning radio show. Click here to listen.

The Khaleejj Times published a great story with a large photo. Click here.

Toni, Mobina and Ladan participated in a radio talk show. Click here.

The Soccer Ladies Take a Field Trip

And a new revolution: It starts with job descriptions

Dr. Syed Bashir inciting a HR revolution in Afghanistan.

Hamida andKhaled Ibrahim Al Qassim of the Dubai Ministry of Economnic Development.

“In Afghanistan, after 30 years of war, there are no rules and corruption is the reality…let us is the core group of people who set an example for others.” This is the powerful voice of Guljan summing up a morning of Human Resource training.

Written job descriptions—the secret HR weapon they learned about to not only help hire the right people, but also to block corruption by giving them a tool to explain why they cannot hire unqualified people who may have friends in high places.

The Associates even gushed about performance evaluations. This was an entirely new concept to them which has the potential to turn them into transformative leaders (two of the four Californians in our group--Athena and Susan--made us put that in).

With the classroom work ended, the Associates boarded buses and taxis for business site visits all over town and beyond. There were welcomed at companies owned by royalty, received promises to import their tomato paste, and found the equipment that would solve the problem of soggy potato chip production. Athena roamed the aisles of a hypermarket to discuss different dried fruit packaging with Mariam. Susan and Hamida were welcomed by one of the top officials at the Ministry of Economic Development. Khatera and Fatima marveled at the workmanship at Marina Furniture. Ladan and Mobina discovered new secrets of making compelling radio commercials. Laurie and Zainul tried to uncover the secrets of a beekeeper who charged $80 for a kilo of honey. Ray and Parwana were clued in to new printing software and the site where it could be downloaded for free. Toni arranged a site visit to herself with the soccer Associates, and successfully planted the idea of how they could maintain their three separate companies but market under one brand.

note: this is the "thought bubble" of the following video

Day Three: Thought for the Day

Day Three: From Marketing to Madness

Habiba and her mint products.

Guljan and her pickled veggies.

Queen Bee Zainul.

One of the tourism and hospitality students.

At the Heritage Site on the tour.

The sea and the Burj.

For Larry--here are Jessica and Laurie.

Today ended with one of the scariest events of any Bpeace mission. But first, you need to hear about marketing day.

Professor Maura Blease implemented what we branded as the DWC CEO teaching model (Dubai Women’s College classroom-exercises-one-on-one model). She opened with 4 of the 7 P’s of marketing, while four other marketing faculty and about 20 third-year marketing students (all prepped once again with the Associate’s business plans) set up their consulting shops.

Habiba (who we call the mint lady because she brews mint bottled water) is doing a lot of marketing things right. She has attractive labeling, is selling her water at a premium price, and is limiting distribution to maintain her premium positioning by selling wholesale to pharmacies. Mint water is seen as having health benefits, and she even has a French import customer interested. She also extracts mint oil, a natural product used to treat rheumatism and asthma.

Guljan, ever imaginative and economical, uses the overly ripe vegetables she grows to make pickled vegetables–a product that represents 15% of her total sales. People in Afghanistan were accustomed to reconstituting powdered tomatoes to make tomato paste. Guljan has introduced fresh tomato paste to the market and this product is increasing in popularity.

One of the marketing faculty advised Zainul her honey should be sold on the basis of purity and to revamp her logo in clean colors (blue of the sky, green of the grass, yellow of the sun) and to not use brown because “brown represents dirt.” The consultant also believed Zainul's competitive edge could be the fact that she is a woman, because purity is more often associated with women than men. Thinking about this, Zainul had an aha moment: to name her line of honey—Queen Bee.

The College’s Tourism and Hospitality Students hired a tour bus to treat us to a city tour. We must have looked starved, because treats were definitely the order of the day, offering us traditional snacks at just about every tour stop. One of the stops was the beach in front the most expensive hotel in the world—the Burj Al Arab for a photo op. Our Associates saw the sea and ran down the beach, tore off their shoes, and tickled their toes in the surf. For most of them, it was the first time they had seen, or felt, the ocean. The Burj Al Arab couldn't shine a candle to the nature's bounty.

Our final port of call was the “Mall of the Emirates” with its 450 stores and indoor ski slope. Now here’s where it gets scary—you try keeping track of 15 Afghan businesswomen in this 2.4 million square foot shopping mall for two hours. Laurie, Susan and Toni tried to not have a melt down, while Wendy, Jess, Khatera, Ladan and Farah, went with the flow. Ray envisioning what was about to happen stepped out of the tour bus and into a taxi cab back to the hotel.

Day Two Highlights

Day Two: Speaking the universal language of finance

Professor Rao going over Parwana's (commercial printer) business plan.

Ladan, center, combining her command of Farsi, and finance background, into a skilled translator for Professor Rao. At left is Wendy, and at right is Guljan who operates a food processing company.


Khatera and Fatima, furniture maker, compleing financial worksheets.

Fatima and a Dubai Women's College student during the business consulting breakout.

Today was Finance Day! The BARTies showed their mettle as true businesswomen in the way they reacted and applied Professor Rao’s practical way of teaching finance. As he took the class through daily cash records for manufacturing businesses, the Associates dove into the worksheets like thirsty marathoners. They were so engaged they had to be prodded to take a lunch break. The bonus showed up when the rest of the Finance faculty at Dubai Women’s College arrived in the afternoon and set themselves up as four different consulting firms. The faculty had thoroughly prepped by analyzing the BARTie’s business plans and offered credible advice specifically tailored to each Associate.

In the soccer consulting room, Dwight Anthony (sporting a soccer ball tie), helped Ferishta, Taj and Azziza, our three ball-manufacturing Associates, analyze their production costs to better compete with Pakistani imports.

Zainul was pleased to report that her sales would increase by 200% this year because of increased honey production. Her consultant pointed out that she hadn’t factored in that a good honey season for her would mean that her competitors would be having one as well.

Mobina, our radio broadcaster, was intrigued by the advice to carefully offer a free month of advertising to a new sponsor in order to gather data to track sales increases, and then to use that data to attract other paying sponsors. Hamida, who runs a business consultancy, translated that idea in trial consulting relationships to woo new clients.

The Associates are hoping to secure some additional time with their finance consultants later this week.

The dollar and cents day ended with a trip into the desert complete with dune bashing, belly dancing, and a few Henna’ed hands and feet.

Day One Video Highlights

Day one with the BARTies: Getting to know each other in hyperdrive.

Nasima.

Miriam, Susan, Athena and Mobina.

Parwana and Ray.

Jessica at the helm.

How it started: Dubai Women's College Dr. Monica Gallant welcomed us all extending every inch of this beautiful campus to our group. How it ended, singing Afghan and American love songs on a bus to a river cruise.

Now here’s everything in between.

Athena crafted a unique icebreaker. She formed groups making sure there was an English speaker in all (no mean feat) and she asked us to share dreams. “Making a difference” was the dream in varying words and languages that wove through each group.

Toni then defined the platform for the BARTies and their three-year Bpeace Program. “What we will do: share knowledge and know-how. What we don’t do: give you money. What we require: assess at the end of the week if we are a good match for each other; and grow your business by adding jobs, with some of those jobs targeted at members of idle or disadvantaged groups.” The nodding heads were joined by raised arms and voices when Toni introduced the mantra for the BARTies: “More jobs mean less violence."

Now, there aren’t that many elevators in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean that every BARTie doesn’t need to have an “elevator pitch” in her pocket. Laurie got to be one of those lucky Bpeacers who directly transferred what she does in real life to her Bpeace experience. Laurie with assist from Athena taught the BARTies how to shape their own elevator pitches. You would think the Afghan women had been doing this for years. They were terrific, and especially loved seeing the video replay of their performances.

Khatera facilitated a panel of the third-year Associates—Nasima, Kamela and Habiba. Nasima advised the BARTies, “Don’t be like sauce all over the place. Focus.”

Big doings when Susan brought out the laptops for our Associates, loaded with a bonus gift: Bpeace training workbooks already translated into DARI. Their appreciation was magnified when they realized the computers had wireless Internet access.

Dubai Women’s College had arranged with their medical unit to provide free check-ups to the Associates. While waiting to be seen, no time was wasted. The Associates worked one-on-one with Bpeacers who were on a mission to learn more about their businesses. Wendy learned how Guljan makes tomato paste. Ladan expanded her knowledge of Mobina’s radio station. Ray managed to get in a few discovery questions on Parwana’s printing business.

Through it all, Sandi kept the logistics working and Jessica photographed, videographed and pinch hit where necessary.

Whew.

Generating Social Change at the Grassroots Level

Jessica creating social change by daring to step off the curb and hail a cab.

Glitter at the gold souk.

Susan arrived today, joining this mission from San Francisco. Those of us who were already in Dubai hadn't a clue what she looked like, she, in turn, hadn't a clue what we looked like. No green carnation, but we clearly we screamed out Bpeace to her when she walked into the hotel business center--we were all working away at our computers. "You must be from Bpeace," she said feeling the love.

We topped off our day of preparing for the BARTies arrival with a visit to the gold souk--bought a barrel full of virtual jewelry and affected some serious cultural shifts. We needed a taxi. Groups of people, 6 deep, also needed taxis--it was bedlam. Jessica, a seasoned New Yorker but a novice to Dubai, did what any honest New Yorker does when she needs a taxi--she went out into the street. Shock and awe. Then one by one other people walked out into the street. Her arm shot up. Other arms shot up...quickly she had the entire crowd of people hailing taxis like New Yorkers. What a beautiful sight!



As we write this, Sandi and Ladan are on the phone to Iran, seeing how Farah is. She hurt her leg and was unable to make the flight to Dubai this afternoon. Susan, social justice advocate today, but formerly a techie, is setting up a cheap printer we bought as an ingenious solution to print shops being closed on Friday (the weekend here). Jessica and Ray are stuffing gift bags for the Associates that include Bpeace pens, Bpeace calculators, Bpeace training DVDs, and comfort goodies including hand lotion, fruit and chips. Khatera and Wendy are due later tonight. Laurie and Toni are bugging each other.

Through the Glass Gladly

We found the Bpeace “Emirates reflection” at the Dubai Women’s College today. It is inspiring to partner with another group of people who are approaching our Associates with such passion and professionalism. Laurie, Toni, Ray, Sandi and Jessica met with Dr. Monica Gallant, Chair of the Business Programs. Her department has organized a week for the BARTies filled with tailor made finance, marketing and human resources classes, site visits to companies, students who will act as teaching assistants, and evening activities to nurture new relationships.

In the coming days, we’ll introduce you to the players at the College. You’ll meet them as our Associates meet them.

The beautiful modern campus (of course all of Dubai is modern) embraces 2,500 undergraduate students. Think palm trees, spraying fountains, beautifully manicured gardens. What a contrast this will be for our Associates from dusty Afghanistan, still suffering from deforested landscapes and crumbling infrastructure.

Welcome to Dubai

Our Associates, 15 Afghan female entrepreneurs, are arriving on Saturday, November 10, from Kabul. The BARTies, as we affectionately call them, will be taking business classes at the Dubai Women's College, going on site visits to companies related to their own businesses and developing a work (and personal) relationship with members of Bpeace.

You will be meeting 15 remarkable Afghan women: a beekeeper who is the "queen" of her 80 female beekeepers; three soccer ball manufacturers who put the mom back into soccer; a commercial printer who we hope to encourage to go digital; a furniture maker who is literally participating in the rebuilding of Kabul; and more and more--from a producer of designer mint water to an importer of heating oil--stay tuned as we will update daily!

On the Road to Dubai

Four Bpeacers from California, six from New York and one from Washington, DC on their way to Dubai.