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29th September 2010Bonisile has sent me this picture from her stand at the SMME fair.
Ntombi has taught he to become a multi skilled decorator and her work is world class.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
SeStuTHESA
This afternoon's SeStuTHESA workshop has been another afternoon of stimulation, discussion, argument and learning. Chris was tasked to teach us more about the use of our blogspots. I particularly wanted to learn more on blogspots because of my Wednesday NVC group's lessons that I give on blogspots. We are using their blogs as a marketing tool for their business marketing strategy. I have come to learn today so that I can go back and teach blogging. In the process I also downloaded PICASA to manage my photo's in order to make it easier to upload on blogs. Then I also added RSS to my outlook so that any posting from my blog and SeStuTHESA blog will come up automatically as an email.
For me this has been a very majo learning and educational experience today. Everything I have learnt today I will aplly practically.
Yesterday Joan gave us a handout of a few pages from Schon, The Reflective Practitioner. The handouts we get and advice on reading are invaluable to me and I take them as a generous gift from Joan.
On a lighter note, I enjoy the teasing and joking, comraderie and argument. If I don't know something and need to ask, I never feel stupid. I am never afraid to ask what may appear to be a naive or uneducated question. I am never afraid to be myself in this space. I feel surrounded by a bubble of friendship and a nurturing educational experience.
For me this has been a very majo learning and educational experience today. Everything I have learnt today I will aplly practically.
Yesterday Joan gave us a handout of a few pages from Schon, The Reflective Practitioner. The handouts we get and advice on reading are invaluable to me and I take them as a generous gift from Joan.
On a lighter note, I enjoy the teasing and joking, comraderie and argument. If I don't know something and need to ask, I never feel stupid. I am never afraid to ask what may appear to be a naive or uneducated question. I am never afraid to be myself in this space. I feel surrounded by a bubble of friendship and a nurturing educational experience.
NVC Workshps
Getting the group up and running with emails is taking quite some time. I feel anxious to move quickly because I want to see them turning their business into a profitable and sustainable business.
The response from the group to become familiar with emails has been one of inspiration, determination and excitement. I taught them how to write every email in a professional way and stresses not to use current sms type of spelling and writing in a business context. We created a signature at the end of the email. I also took a photograph of each person to include in their email signature.
Once that was complete we set up a blogspot for each person. They were so excited; I explained that the blogspot was the easiest way to create their own “web site” for marketing purposes. I don’t yet know much about blogging but we managed to get a blogspot for each person with their names and details and photograph. I will learn more about blogging this week and then apply my learning to the group next week.
These exercises are creating marketing tools and a company image for each one in the group and that is progress even if I feel that it is slow.
Reflections:
Each workshop is building the business of each person.
During the rest of the week it is up to each individual to start using these tools by creating an email data base, handing out the marketing letters, perfecting them and focussing on their business.
Again we did not discuss money because the group dictate to me what they want to do in the workshops. I do think that once the blogs are underway it is the first thing in the next set of workshops that I will start to tackle. That is the emotional side of money including the fear of money. More on that in the next few weeks.
I constantly reflect on business establishment for unemployed people.
1. Am I going about the self employed transformation in the right way?
2. Are these methods going to work?
3. What else must I introduce?
4. How much of me is in this process?
5. Should I attempt to start my own small women’s clothing range so that I am experiencing the same business start up process as my group is?
The response from the group to become familiar with emails has been one of inspiration, determination and excitement. I taught them how to write every email in a professional way and stresses not to use current sms type of spelling and writing in a business context. We created a signature at the end of the email. I also took a photograph of each person to include in their email signature.
Once that was complete we set up a blogspot for each person. They were so excited; I explained that the blogspot was the easiest way to create their own “web site” for marketing purposes. I don’t yet know much about blogging but we managed to get a blogspot for each person with their names and details and photograph. I will learn more about blogging this week and then apply my learning to the group next week.
These exercises are creating marketing tools and a company image for each one in the group and that is progress even if I feel that it is slow.
Reflections:
Each workshop is building the business of each person.
During the rest of the week it is up to each individual to start using these tools by creating an email data base, handing out the marketing letters, perfecting them and focussing on their business.
Again we did not discuss money because the group dictate to me what they want to do in the workshops. I do think that once the blogs are underway it is the first thing in the next set of workshops that I will start to tackle. That is the emotional side of money including the fear of money. More on that in the next few weeks.
I constantly reflect on business establishment for unemployed people.
1. Am I going about the self employed transformation in the right way?
2. Are these methods going to work?
3. What else must I introduce?
4. How much of me is in this process?
5. Should I attempt to start my own small women’s clothing range so that I am experiencing the same business start up process as my group is?
Friday, September 10, 2010
NVC Workshops
8th September 2010
New Venture Creation (NVC) Workshop Reflections
During the past week I have spent much time reflecting on what the NVC group may need for today’s workshop. There are so many aspects of starting their businesses and sustaining them that I feel need to be treated with urgency and it concerns me that the progress some are making is quiet slow. (Some are post graduates and some have very little education.) All are invited to this funded opportunity for business establishment coaching.
Before the class today, I had decided to begin a series of talks for the next few weeks on money. Not in the accounting sense of the word, but the emotional aspect of money. I have been considering the emotional blockages of people to earn money, make money, use money, abuse money. I have been considering how people who have never had access to money due to poverty, circumstances, and social and economic disadvantage, approach the monetary aspect of their business from an emotional point of view. If there has never been money in our life how do we get to grips with using it to run a business no matter how big or small.
I did not have time to ask the group because the workshop today had a life of its own.
For the first time most of the group are using a computer. For the past few weeks we have been working on marketing letters, brochures, business cards, email addresses and building a data base for marketing purposes. The group love having access to computers, emails and the internet. They arrive at the workshop ready and enthusiastic to do their work so that by the end of the morning they have a new business tool for their business. I realized that I need to let them lead me and dictate in an unconscious way what they need from me. Is this not “servant leadership”? My goal for each Wednesday workshop is that each one walks away with something concrete that they use for their business
Today, we did not discuss money, but I did ask them to think about it for the workshop next week. Perhaps once they have reflected on their attitude towards money we will have a more in depth discussion next week.
At the end of the workshop I asked them to send me an email with comments on today’s session. Here are some of them, I have not made any corrections:
“I would like to thank you for teaching me how to draft the broucher and also do the attachment and its very exciting. thank you again”
“1. “Khanyisile learnt that if shes sending an email to a professional person she must not say Hi!”
2. How to make a brochure”
“Today I learnt how to design a flyer and market my company.It was exciting and used my creative side.I am actually hopeful, the steps we are making are just enough and not overwhelming.You make business easy.I am sometimes not sure how to begin this is helping.Thank you”
New Venture Creation (NVC) Workshop Reflections
During the past week I have spent much time reflecting on what the NVC group may need for today’s workshop. There are so many aspects of starting their businesses and sustaining them that I feel need to be treated with urgency and it concerns me that the progress some are making is quiet slow. (Some are post graduates and some have very little education.) All are invited to this funded opportunity for business establishment coaching.
Before the class today, I had decided to begin a series of talks for the next few weeks on money. Not in the accounting sense of the word, but the emotional aspect of money. I have been considering the emotional blockages of people to earn money, make money, use money, abuse money. I have been considering how people who have never had access to money due to poverty, circumstances, and social and economic disadvantage, approach the monetary aspect of their business from an emotional point of view. If there has never been money in our life how do we get to grips with using it to run a business no matter how big or small.
I did not have time to ask the group because the workshop today had a life of its own.
For the first time most of the group are using a computer. For the past few weeks we have been working on marketing letters, brochures, business cards, email addresses and building a data base for marketing purposes. The group love having access to computers, emails and the internet. They arrive at the workshop ready and enthusiastic to do their work so that by the end of the morning they have a new business tool for their business. I realized that I need to let them lead me and dictate in an unconscious way what they need from me. Is this not “servant leadership”? My goal for each Wednesday workshop is that each one walks away with something concrete that they use for their business
Today, we did not discuss money, but I did ask them to think about it for the workshop next week. Perhaps once they have reflected on their attitude towards money we will have a more in depth discussion next week.
At the end of the workshop I asked them to send me an email with comments on today’s session. Here are some of them, I have not made any corrections:
“I would like to thank you for teaching me how to draft the broucher and also do the attachment and its very exciting. thank you again”
“1. “Khanyisile learnt that if shes sending an email to a professional person she must not say Hi!”
2. How to make a brochure”
“Today I learnt how to design a flyer and market my company.It was exciting and used my creative side.I am actually hopeful, the steps we are making are just enough and not overwhelming.You make business easy.I am sometimes not sure how to begin this is helping.Thank you”
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
My Lived experience being part of the SeSthuTHESA group presenting at the NMMU Action Research Conference August 19 & 20 2010
The bus trip to Port Elizabeth was reasonably quiet. I enjoyed the camaraderie that was evident from the moment we met at DUT to embark on our journey. This atmosphere of tolerance, kindness, sharing, humility and humour continued throughout the three day experience.
I did not present on the first day and chose the sessions I wanted to attend carefully so that I could see speakers from other centres and at the same time be present for my group so that I could give them my support. I also wanted to hear my colleagues’ presentations anyway. Fortunately I did get to see other presenters. There were three to five exceptional one’s and the rest were very disappointing having lost the plot of Action Research. It made me extremely proud that our group through the coaching we receive from our professor Joan Conolly, all made outstanding presentations.
What I have learnt:
• I must always be myself.
• The audience are also human beings with feelings, hopes and dreams and talking to a large audience is ok because of that.
• Telling my experience like it is also ok because disappointments, mistakes and dark periods in our lives are part of our Lived Experience (Whitehead) and being truthful about them is important.
• Therefore covering up and pretending everything is good is not ok.
• I listen to the way my colleagues’ work, present, think and process information and learn from them as well. In fact I have learnt an enormous amount from them. I value the advice and input they give me in my work.
I felt so honoured and humbled by being noticed by Jack Whitehead and having my presentation put on YouTube. The affirmation from my colleagues meant even more and looking at Lee, Linda, Naretha, Chris and Joan’s faces during the presentation confirmed the bond that all of us have with each other.
That bond and connectedness is very important in the scholarly journey I have chosen to embark upon. I am fed by the energy of the group and our professor. The energy of the group energises me and I am then in turn encouraged by that in the times that are low on this journey.
The meeting with Jack was inspired, connected, with an enormous amount of cohesion. He is a true Servant Leader and inspires me to great heights. I feel so privileged to work with him.
The skeleton and outline of my New Venture Creation Book came to me while on the bus trip back. I pictured how the book will look and how to go about writing it. (436words)
The trip back on the bus was full of lightness, laughter, easy banter, argument and jest. It was a totally wonderful experience that I will always treasure.
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