What are we going to do?

Our minor project is part of a bigger plan. This plan consist of setting up a wooden belts business which employs street youth. This business will produce the belts in Nairobi, and sends them to the Netherlands. Here the belts will be sold by partner company HABA HABA, a start-up in the Netherlands that will be run by the three of us. 

This idea arised when Kimberly and Caroline came back from their trip to Nairobi were they helped setting up a arts & crafts business. They had brought a few wooden belts with them and they got lots of positive comments. Some people posed the idea to import them to the Netherlands and sell them there. This together with a conversation with Isaac (The one whom they set up the arts & crafts business with and who is now our supervisor) about youth unemployment being a pressing problem in Nairobi led them to the idea of setting up a wooden belts business for street youth. 

As you can see, this is quite an ambitious plan, especially for those three months. Therefore, for the purpose of this minor our goal is to write a complete business plan by the end of the internship. This business plan will give insight in the feasibility of the company and makes it easier to find sponsors and actually start things up. One part of writing the business plan is also testing the plan. We will do this by providing a training in producing the belts for about 15 people. This way they get the chance to learn a job and next to that we will get extra insight in the process of making these belts.

Since starting up the company is our ultimate goal, we will also focus on crowdfunding and testing of the market in Europe. Crowdfunding we will do via a website and the testing of the market will be done by one of our mothers. 

To prevent raising expectation we cannot meet we give a clear summary below of what we can and cannot do: