Beverly Moodie

Beverley Moodie is training disadvantaged, unemployed South Africans to start their own small business ventures. Her approach has so far led to the creation of more than a thousand new businesses in fields as diverse as fence making, candle manufacture, gardening, and tour guide services.

Beverley Moodie provides a new service that builds self-sufficiency and hope: she trains illiterate and semiliterate people to quickly start their own micro-enterprises (within two weeks). Her work is built on her insight that, for the training to have a chance of succeeding, it had first to build people's self-confidence and then quickly proceed to reveal their hidden skills and talents, help them produce a product, and then test it in the marketplace. The fact that her approach does not put money or capital first emphasizes that Bev is fine tuned to the people her idea targets–people with no capital. Her strategy enables people to discover for themselves what they can do.
Bev's approach leads trainees to their decisions but does not prescribe; they have to figure their plans out themselves, or they will not own and pursue them as their own. Her training method is designed to match people with skills that can put money in their pockets as quickly as possible. Acknowledging the global reality that people are not guaranteed employment, this training approach helps to break a cycle of poverty and provides people with the tools necessary to sustain and employ themselves.
Through an agility she brings to people's minds about how they market, Bev is also building a service ethic in a new level of the economy in South Africa. Although her program is designed for illiterate and semiliterate people, the potential impact is not limited to this segment of the population. The components of and strategies derived from this process have lessons for everyone, even educated people.

There is widespread illiteracy and unemployment in South Africa's black community–45 percent of that workforce is unemployed or underemployed. Even employed blacks are feeling pressure. In 1996 the national government and many corporations went through a downsizing that meant the loss of more than sixty thousand jobs, with most of the impact falling at the bottom end of the wage scale, which is largely black. Many of these people had no idea of basic business principles and low self-confidence, and they face competition from people working in menial jobs who are seeking to move up the income ladder.
There is nowhere for such people to go to get started. Business schools cater to people with basic literacy. Trade schools assume that a person has made a decision about the need to acquire a certain set of skills, knows about the particular trade, and is able to apply what they are taught. This is beyond the knowledge and financial capabilities of many, if not most, illiterate and semiliterate people.
For those that are able to acquire a trade, there are very few resources available. Many are denied access to formal credit services or face exorbitantly high interest rates. The few finance facilities that do exist for micro-enterprise development are of limited access because they are designed to serve specific project areas such as housing.

To build a group of new entrepreneurs, Bev has developed a "start-up training" methodology that addresses the relationship between training, skills, and income. Her training has the potential to really make a difference: it has worked for disempowered middle class housewives and is adaptable to a much broader segment of society. It requires fifteen to twenty hours of classroom work and more time spent out of class designing and selling a sample product, so the participants can quickly earn money–showing them that they can be entrepreneurs. The training focuses on two particularly important lessons. The first is that you have to produce what people will buy, not what you think they will buy or just what you want to produce; the second lesson is shrinking the need for start-up capital. No money for a hair salon? One trainee decided to start a portable hair cutting service in people's homes instead. In this way, the trainees come to understand that it is in their own economic self-interest to pay attention to the person(s) they serve, the customer.
Bev encourages trainees to deliver a good product and to market it attentively, but also to be flexible, not to stick to a single product or marketing strategy forever. Part of her training is that it is important to continually find out what people want and need. This concept of service is relatively new in South Africa and has remained unaddressed in the context of small-scale enterprises. With it Bev is building competence in skills that will be relevant in the growing tourist trade, in which the ability to give good customer service is a marketable asset.

There are three formal elements to Bev's strategy. First, train a cadre of trainers to handle a growing demand and create the necessary feedback mechanisms to ensure quality control of that on-going work; secondly, respond to the needs for more training by the trained with various skill packages, and leave more formal training to existing business school institutions; thirdly, provide sustainability for the program by building a network that enables budding enterprises to buy and sell from each other, to take advantage of scale opportunities, develop a support system, and identify new trainers.
Trainers are paid from fees paid directly by participants. Bev also derives fees from the training manual she has developed, which she sells to trainers, and the training materials she has developed for trainees. To date, Bev has used her profits to provide income to the trainers, to ensure they view their work as a viable full- or part-time business.
Bev is building an institutional base through the Business Education Outreach Network, which she established. It is producing additional skill packages in finance, accounting, and management skills to meet the growing of demands from people who have already received initial training, as well as customized requests from institutional clients such as welfare agencies. The Network will shortly produce audiotapes and booklets in a variety of additional languages. An outside buyer has approached Bev about the possibility of buying 500 tons of honey for export through the Network. Bev hopes that the growth of new successful small enterprises will persuade banks to change their attitudes about lending to this group.

In 1980 Bev and a partner started a sewing machine business based on developing the economic potential of housewives who needed to generate extra income - a population where lack of resources, skills, and self-confidence were problems that had to be overcome. The business grew and became quite well known through radio and print advertising. Five years ago, when her partner decided to join her husband in starting a new business, Bev decided to broaden her focus to look at what leads to the success and failure of small business ventures.
Bev's work with housewives and her own background as a middle-class housewife gave her an insight into how to address the related problems of skills, confidence, and resources. At the same time, her own research had pinpointed a gap: training for the illiterate and semiliterate. She designed her step-by-step approach, drawing on her own experiences. She pilot tested it with several groups, thereby supporting her research finding that there was a broad market for such training.

The success of the approach, as people set up new businesses, caused more and more groups to demand the training. Bev trained four trainers, who are now seasoned enough to train trainers themselves. Bev channels as much of her income as possible back into her enterprise, which is a nonprofit. She describes herself as the larger money earner in her family; her husband is involved in starting up a small business.
People are often impressed by Bev's commitment, spirit, and ability to think through various situations. She is a true entrepreneur with a real energy and conviction in what she is doing. In Bev's view, unless people are able to develop the ability to make money so they can eat, political changes will not make any difference.