BASETTERRE, St. Kitts – THE Women in Small Enterprise (WISE) programme would be undertaken a series of training programmes for 2014 to better equip women in management of small entities.
Coordinator of the WISE Programme Denise Byron Morris, in speaking during an exclusive interview with SKNVibes Business, explained that these initiatives became necessary after several observations were made and feedback received which indicated that women lack the requisite skills and business knowledge to make their entities successful.
“One of the things we were supposed to do that we didn’t get off on but are planning to do is have training sessions for two men. They will learn how to keep their books or financial records so that in the event that they would want to expand, they would now have these records and go to the commercial banks and show them that this is their profits.”
She added that when the programme is completed women would be better able to properly manage their finances and to this end, they would be able to maximize on their turnover rate.
“One of the things that should have come out of this programme is that we look at women’s business practices such as comparing income and expenditure and see how they use the money that they make to keep turning it over.”
Under current practices, most small entities owned and managed by women have poorly managed records which makes it difficult for them to obtain funding from banking institutions.
“Unless you can prove to the banking institution through your financial records that you have made $20,000 or so, they wouldn’t lend you that money. So that is one of the things which was our intention, and we started out doing that.”
She lamented that one of the areas of challenge for the programme is how to get everyone under the safe roof at the same time since small business owners ply their trade and various hours.
“It was what we were going to teach them but it was how we were going to teach them because we are aware that women are from all around the island. Also they have different types of businesses while some of them work in the day and some of them work in the nights.”
Under the training programme, women would learn how to best mange to make their business profitable, learn the art of how to market themselves to the customers and receive other training in furthering their respective small entities.
“It’s how best to further your business to make it more profitable to you and even to expand it. One of the things we were looking at is how to market your product because some of them (women) have really good businesses but they don’t have the marketing skills so that’s another area that we would be looking into,” Morris promised.
