Story of Oupa & Ouma

This morning, we buried our Oupa at Westpark Jewish Cemetery in Johannesburg, surrounded by Jacaranda trees in full bloom, a perfect goodbye to a man who even in his final months was able to appreciate the simple pleasures of nature and the beauty of flowers.

The rabbi told us last night how important it is to talk about and share our memories and stories. As I board a plane to Rwanda unable to spend the week of Shiva with my family, I feel the need to share some of my memories, to keep them fresh and alive as a reminder of all the values and wisdom I have gained from both my Oupa and Ouma, never by preaching, shouting or telling us what to do but by living a life of integrity and kindness that has influenced so much of who I am today and has touched so many people that knew and loved them.

The story of my Oupa cannot be told without my Ouma, and although she died 16 years ago, throughout my childhood there was no such thing as Oupa without Ouma. They were a perfect couple whose love and devotion to each other should serve as a model for us all.

My brother and I along with our cousins spent every school holiday in Parys, where almost as soon as we were out the car, after grabbing something Ouma had baked from the well-stocked glass jars in the kitchen we were yelling “Oupa PushMe” waiting for him to push us on the swings in the backyard. When we tired of that there were countless other things to do in the ‘round house’ (round because we could run right around it). Throughout the week-long school holiday we would spend our time climbing the tree, bowling lemons down the driveway, picking strawberries or ‘millies’ from the garden or shelling peas (and me being terrified of finding worms). At night we would spend hours playing cards - Kaluki, Poker or Casino or watching the cartoons that Oupa diligently taped for us throughout the year before the 7am news.

Daily outings included sailing margarine tubs down the furrows in the streets, taking our dog Bubbles to the golf-course and shouting our lungs out at the ‘dog who has no ears’ while she sniffed ‘every blade of grass’ or  going fishing and miraculously catching a fish the moment Oupa got ‘tired’ and asked us to take over his line. On other days we would go jump on the rocks and laugh at ‘the crocodile’s toilet’, throw stones from the swing bridge into the river and try make them skip or play putt-putt at Mimosa Gardens (Going back with school on Shabbatons everyone thought we were world class golfers given our skills on the Parys Putt-Putt Course.)   There was always a new and fun activity.

We learned so much from our time with our Ouma and Oupa; business skills (Oupa was always ready to give us your ‘less valuable’ silver Rands for our  ‘more valuable’ gold cents), science and mechanics  (from dissecting an old washing machines and other kitchen appliances) or architecture and survival (from building tents out of sheets on the veranda). Despite growing up in the heart of Sandton I’ve always considered myself a “Parysie Meisie” at heart (and through the tough soles of my bare feet) because of the many many holidays we spent in Parys with Oupa and Ouma.

So much of who I am today was influenced by my Oupa, when I create my cereal mixtures each morning or add cheese to my porridge, salt on my melon or sugar to a half grapefruit I think of him. My first memory of drinking wine is drinking sweat Late Harvest from a box carton in the fridge on hot Summer evenings, today I grow  strawberries and herbs on my balcony that reminds me of the garden in Parys, and wherever I am in the world going into an old shul, the smell of old wood and leather reminds me of going to shul with my Oupa in Parys, kicking stones or coke cans on the walk there or playing with his wooden stick.

There are also so many stories from before my time, stories of a young Oupa in his youth, cutting up his father’s slippers to make a catapult or climbing out of the window of Heder on Sundays. As well as stories that are so typical of my Oupa and Oumas’ kindness, their open home that was always full of people or new stories I learned this week at the hospital of how they took in a child for a few years when they learned there was a Jewish child in the Orphanage in Parys.

Both Oupa and Ouma where a paradigm for kindness that has influenced everyone in their families  - we all share their love of animals and nature, appreciation for the small things in life, a good sense of humor, excellent poker skills and recognition of the importance of Jewish traditions and family.

I feel so lucky to have had my Oupa for such a big part of my childhood, teenage and adult life, him leaving us is in many ways is the end of an era, the last of his generation from Parys, yet he leaves such a strong legacy for his children, grandchildren nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews.

Oupa and by extension Ouma’s spirit and memories will  always be with us, every time we use one of our many “Oupa design” challah covers, placemats, bags or beed-works, every time we walk into a noisy restaurant and complain about it being ‘Klap and Kop’, every time we mutter ‘Jingo’ in appreciation of a beautiful flower, hear "Parys' Turtledoves in the morning or edge an opponent to  “goeie, goeie, goeie” in a poker or Kaluki game.

While even at 95 he still had no great grandchildren (much to our parents dismay), one day we will impart to our children so much of what we learned from our Oupa and Ouma who showed us that there is no need for expensive toys or electronics but that margarine tubs, old sheets or a broken washing machine are quite sufficient when mixed with a huge amount of love, patience and kindness.

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Finding Time for Sunrises and Sunsets

Over the past 10 days, I have experienced an unusual number of sunrises and sunsets - the past 4 days on a boat, climbing Mount Baktur volcano before dawn last week, sunsets on Seminyak beach in Bali and this morning’s sunrise over Flores Harbour. While the 4am call to prayers and roosters may have had something to do with it this morning, it seems by body clock over the past 10 days has reset itself to rise with the sun. Sunrise and sunset have always been my favourite part of the day- a calm, almost static feeling in the air, yet so seldom in day-to-day life do we have the opportunity to experience these moments.

Over the past few days I have been aboard a boat between Lombok Island and Flores, stopping of each day to snorkel, hike, swim with manta rays, see the Komodo dragons and just enjoying the beautiful views along the way. This was by no means a luxury boat trip, we slept on thin mattresses on the top deck, besides a 15-minute swim in a waterfall, where constantly covered in sea salt, sat on the floor or hard benches, experienced a fair degree of seasickness during the 18 hour sailing stretch on day 2 and managed to entertain ourselves along with other 20 fellow travellers and crew aboard the small boat. In brief, it was an exhilarating experience, fun and exciting but with plenty boat time to think and reflect.

My friend and I were at quite a different place to most of our fellow travellers, who were mainly in their early 20’s and taking a year of to travel, part of me felt really jealous of these travellers, fresh out of college, with so many possibilities and opportunities ahead of them. I remember the feeling when I first travelled for 6 months at 21 and then again at 23. My travel experience was quite different: interning, working and volunteering in Geneva, New York and later a rural village in Nepal, less of the seemingly carefree adventures, hoping from country to country every few weeks. Yet I have no doubt those travels and the people I met along the way impacted the way I think and the decisions I made in life. Looking back, I still think it was the best type of travelling for me, in each place doing something meaningful that I believed in, living and experiencing life in a different country, meeting new people and gaining the thrills of exploring the region over the weekends.

In a sense, this remains my life today, I have a meaningful job I believe in that allows me to travel regularly, while at the same time I have a fantastic lifestyle in Tel Aviv, filled with great friends, fun and excitement and living 5-minutes from the beach I still feel as if I am on holiday and regularly go for a swim/surf after work or run on the beachfront (Where I still manage to catch some sunsets now and again). There is also a different kind of thrill I experience from my work, finishing a successful workshop with local entrepreneurs, walking out of a good meeting and jumping on a moto taxi to get to the next one in Rwanda or running a demo with 120 smallholder farmers, I love the excitement that is still a part of my ‘normal life’ and the energy I get from doing something I believe in.

That said, I am not done travelling, while I have never have taken off a year for world travels, over the course of my 20s I have had so many opportunities for both work and vacations, between work travels for my previous and current job and taking advantage of our many chagim each September-October, since moving to Israel in 2008 I have managed to travel in Nepal, Thailand, Ethiopia twice, Ghana, Kenya twice, Uganda, Jordan (Petra), Tanzania, India, Indonesia, a year in London and Rwanda so many times I have lost count. During each trip whether work or pleasure I feel I have learnt something about the world and life and hope I will never lose the passion for travel. It’s also been good to realise on this recent trip that I can still be very happy ‘slumming it’. While travelling alone I am comfortable to ‘splurge’ these days and spend 30-40$ on a hotel room and more when it’s for work, travelling with a friend we have been staying in basic but beautiful accommodation, where despite no hot water or A/C I have been quite content living basically, compensated by the beautiful views and surroundings. (Last night we slept in tent accommodation overlooking the harbour).

Thinking about it, I’ve realised in many ways without realising it I have managed to put into practice the advice from the ‘4-hour work week’ I read last year, of incorporating mini-retirements into my life and learning to work remotely. Wifi is so prevalent these days I could pretty much work from everywhere and given that I enjoy my work, am equally happy sitting on my computer overlooking a beautiful view than if I was reading a novel.

So thinking about it, I am not actually jealous of those young travellers who still have so many unknowns in their lives, I love my life and wouldn’t change it if I could, I am slowly reconciling myself with the fact that in January I turn 30, I have been terrified of saying goodbye to my 20’s, not ready to get ‘old’, scared of the fact that I am still alone yet not ready to ‘settle down’ and still sworn against the idea of a suburban lifestyle. I guess I am slowly starting to accept the fact that I am getting older and will and want to, to an extent ‘settle’ while not giving up on the excitement, adventures and experiences that have been a part of my life thus far.

I guess the challenge will be how to stay young even as I get older, to allow myself to keep experiencing, learning, reflecting and growing. The best part of travelling is it brings me back to that sense of awareness of being, conscious of my actions and also realising my faults that I do not have time to take note of on a day-to-day basis. This trip has not been without its frustrations, a 25-minute flight delayed 6 hours, waiting for hours for transportation that never arrived, boat schedules changed, my credit card forged. Each of these frustrations, a lesson in patience, forcing me to accept that there is nothing I can do and pushing myself to take the attitude that everything happens for a reason. I find myself thinking how travel is for the privileged what life is for most of the world, we choose to put ourselves in what can become frustrating circumstances, yet most people have to deal day to day with poor, unreliable transport, infrastructure, insecurity. Travelling also highlights the inequalities of our world, where even a budget traveller has a taste of luxury as they sit enjoying a cocktail on the beachfront while local people come try sell their wares or offer a massage. While always having a bleeding heart will not make for a very good traveller I think keeping some perspective and awareness is also important as we haggle over what is essentially a few cents so as not to be ripped off, when that money really makes little difference in our lives but is likely quite significant for that of the seller. While I certainly still bargain, this is definitely a reality check I try to remember every now and then as I travel. In a recent Rabbi Sacks post about Succot, he criticises the egotism of ‘the age of the selfie’, a time of ‘tourists not pilgrims’. I agree with his assessment but I also think there is something in between to strive for, a conscious traveller, one who uses his experience and travels to heighten his sensitivity, humility and appreciation for this amazing yet unfair and often cruel world we live in and to try do something about that.

In my final high school English matric oral examination, I spoke about how I never wanted a ‘white picket fence existence’ and described my hopes and excitement for the future, while those dreams have over the years changed and developed, my basic sentiment remains the same, my 20’s have certainly not led to a white picket fence lifestyle and I hope that the future will be equally filled with excitement, adventures, travels, people I love and care about, meaning and of course sunrises and sunsets. 

10 Surfing Lessons for Life - Reflections from Bali

At the beginning of the summer I took up surf lessons with the goal of “becoming like the cool surfer turtle dude from Finding Memo”. What I did not expect was that each time I sat bobbing in the waves (or more accurately getting washed around by the waves) I would gain various “life lessons” which I have been reflecting on over the last few days while I have been surfing in Bali. Sitting tonight, listening to live music at my hotel, drinking a beer and thinking about Yom Kippur tomorrow, I thought I would share some of these reflections. (I had to add that line to re-enforce that I am cool, even if I never made it to the status of the surfing turtle Dude)

Lesson One: Don’t think like a man ie. Do think

As two feministicly inclined women who decided to take up surfing lessons, we were not so enchanted with our first bit of advice from our new instructor:

Manly surf instructor: "When you surf, you need to think like a man"

Feminist surfers: "What does that mean…?”

Manly surf instructor: "Men don’t think, in surfing you must not think…”

Well it turns out, that despite trying in vain, to stop thinking, that may not have been the best advice, arriving in Bali, the first thing Johan my new instructor told me was that I had been taught totally wrong, turns out “not thinking” is not the most advanced technique for learning to surf, and within one lesson of taking simple ‘beginner steps’ that required constant thought I was surfing a lot better.

Lesson Learnt: “Don’t think” may work well for Israelis (men) but actually conscious thought and awareness of my actions greatly improved my surfing abilities. Life lesson: Think! The same way going into autopilot and just relying on my initial gut reaction did not improve my surfing abilities, being conscious and aware of my actions in my day to day activities is probably a better way to go through life.

Lesson 2 – Energy consumption & patience

For a high adrenaline, high energy sport it’s amazing just how much patience you need for surfing. My favourite bit of advice came from a 16-year-old-looking instructor that took us for lesson 2:

Me: Paddle like crazy every time anything that looks remotely like a wave comes my way
16-year-old instructor: “Reguah (Relax), save your energy for the right waves.”

So true! I have a tendency to run around, chasing after every project or opportunity and often waste a huge amount of energy “splashing around” –  An important lesson for me is definitely to slow down and be patient, preparing myself for the “right” wave, whatever that may be and when it comes along to paddle like crazy not to miss it.

Lesson 3 -Waves really do come in waves

Sometimes when the water is very calm you can wait for what feels like ages for a wave, and then when the waves do come, they come in a pack, one after the other, but if you come off your board on the first one, you miss them all.

In Life: Sometime there are periods of calm then almost out of nowhere work and life commitments come flooding your way from every direction. I guess the lesson here is to use the quiet periods in life to reflect, gain energy and prepare for the next run of waves, as they will come – they always do!

Lesson 4: Ego Management

When you catch a wave, it feels like one of the best feelings in the world, you soaring, adrenaline rushing as you move towards the shore (even with my beginner surf skills)– but next thing you lose your balance and come crushing down, tumbling through the surf, snot running from your nose – not quite the glamour you see on TV.

An entrepreneur I know once described the entrepreneurial start-up journey as: “It’s never as good as it seems and never as bad as I seems” this quote stuck with me, as it’s so true – when you riding the wave, the adrenaline rushing, its good to remember you can always come crashing down, and when you on the floor, crushed, there is always the potential of catching the next wave…

Lesson 5: We can’t stay a beginner forever

Maybe the best ego-crasher is as you think you getting good, you have the humbling experience of realising that your large board size could have more to do with it than your surfing abilities. As you upgrade to a smaller, more advanced board you find yourself again losing your balance and struggling to stand up. But staying with a beginner board is not an option because as you go deeper and the waves get bigger a large board is far more likely to snap.

Life lesson: As we get comfortable, life seems to get harder, more challenging but we have to move on and face it, remaining at ‘beginner level’ forever is not an option, we need to face new challenges to keep improving, we can’t get too comfortable.

Lesson 6: Perseverance – One step forward, two steps back

When the waves are strong, going back into the sea can be a challenge, each time a wave comes it pushes you a metre or two more back – Lesson: Slowl & steady - we need to keep pushing forward.

Lesson 7: Commitment - Making time in your daily life

Despite my enthusiasm for surfing at the start of summer, the last few weeks with travel, work, life, I have hardly been surfing and I miss it! I loved Rabbi Sack’s article  last week on renewing commitments at this time of year – I don’t think a commitment to surfing is what he had in mind but as with all thing in life, the commitment is what eventually allows you to graduate from beginner to “surfer dude turtle”.

Lesson 8: There is no power steering on a surf board

Once I catch a wave, I have little to no control over the direction I go, I generally try steer the board as best I can and hope for the best. I guess life is the same, we can try to steer and aim for certain targets but there comes a time when we need to just aim for the right direction and then accept that not everything is in our control and just have faith that the powers that be will take us where we need to go (and not knock anyone out along the way)

Lesson 9: Appreciation of the power of nature

While most of the time it’s fun, there have been times where I’ve been pulled down by a wave and it’s just plain scary – Lesson:  acceptance and respect for things that are out of our control – Life is a scary place, we don’t need a wave to ‘get knocked down’ we need to just appreciate all the incredible experiences life has to offer and do our best to learn from them and get back up each time we get knocked down.  

Lesson 10: Wear sunscreen (and re-apply) – I somehow managed to get horribly sun burnt.

The Story of Naki – The Social Cleaning Project

As anyone who is any part of my social-media universe knows, over the past months I have been working on a social Start-Up – Naki, initially intended to be an application, similar to Uber or airbnb connecting Tel Avivians looking for cleaners and asylum seekers looking for home cleaning. However for the last few weeks you may have noticed that my facebook status is far less frequently announcing a new cleaner or trying to recruit new clients. Faced with various challenges in moving ahead with this venture and busy with work and life I’ve been consciously ignoring the “Naki – To DO” note on my laptop on which I had spent so much of my time over the past months, unwilling to face the fact that Naki, as we had originally conceptualised it, has simply not worked. 

Last week I was asked to give a talk at the Zionut2000 annual conference on Naki and our progress since the Humancity Do-athon where the idea was conceptualised back in March. The task of having to sit down and try and understand and explain where Naki is today was a great opportunity  to reflect and try to learn from both what we succeeded in achieving over the past 6 months and why we ultimately failed. I have learnt a great deal from this experience and given the huge amount of support and encouragement I received along the way I thought I’d try share some of those lessons (Feel free to skip the background below and jump ahead to lessons learned)

Background

Naki was based on the idea of connecting between the very “first world” problem of busy Tel Avivians who are constantly looking for quality home cleaners and African asylum seekers who struggle to find work for decent pay. The plan was eventually to build an application that connects between the two sides and offers peer reviews and ratings.

On the social side, the opportunity  or “problem” Naki was looking to solve emerged from the fact that asylum seekers in Israel who come from Eritrea or Sudan are not given refugee status but rather receive a “conditional release” visa which allows them to stay in the country. (Essentially a de-facto recognition by the Israeli government that  the human rights situation in these countries is sufficiently severe that they can’t according to international law deport these people back, while at the same time not officially offering refugee status which would entitle them to basic rights and services such as the opportunity to work). The conditional release document however explicitly states that “this document does not constitute a work visa” and so in 2011 various human rights groups took this issue to the Supreme Court which recognised that we can’t permit people to stay in Israel while at the same time denying them the opportunity to earn a living. Therefore the court ruled that it is not illegal to employ such people and this ruling has been used as the basis for employment ever since. [Read more here]

However most Israelis do not know this and are wary of employing asylum seekers both for legal reasons and because they don’t know asylum seekers that they trust to bring into their homes. Thus most asylum seekers are forced to work in the same poorly paying jobs in sectors where human resource companies often take advantage of their unstable situation.

Naki – The Social Cleaning Project

The goal of Naki was to help asylum seekers find decent work by raising awareness among the general public about the potential to employ asylum seekers while at the same time humanising this population through enabling personal interaction. We hoped that a by-product of this venture would result in the breaking down of some of the stereotypes associated with the asylum seeker population.

We realised that this would not be easy and that there were some core assumptions we would have to test right away. So we set to work building our “MVP” (minimal viable product) a basic service to test some of these assumptions.

From the start Facebook was a core component of our venture, on the demand side we used it to gain immediate feedback about people’s willingness to employ asylum seekers, we then used it to advertise “recommended cleaners” (through Secret Tel Aviv and other local groups), recruit potential workers (through asylum seeker-related groups) and to crowd source ideas and volunteers (the name, lawyers, social media experts etc).   

We also reached out to the various refugee groups to recruit cleaners, I soon found a perfect partner, the former head of the Fur Community who helped both in recruiting further cleaners and who himself cleaned and thus was extremely helpful in developing and refining our model for working with clients and cleaners.

Our model was simple, I would meet with potential cleaners, explain the project and that I was not an employer but simply making recommendations. I would then take a picture of their visa, recording when it expired (generally asylum seekers need to renew their visas every two months at the ministry of interior.) I’d usually try get at least one reference and then I’d do a trial clean in my home (my apartment was the cleanest it’s ever been over the past months.) I’d then write a recommendation and we created a beautiful profile for each cleaner. It was very important for to us convey a sense of who the person was, (e.g. what they studied in Eritrea/Sudan, whether they had children if they played soccer etc.) I’d then post on facebook and people would contact me to make appointments, (later I found a generic app to expediate the process). At first I micro-managed, sending reminders, coordinating times and collecting feedback from both sides. Essentially I was trying to be the “Naki App” in my spare time. There were certainly challenges but in general the process worked pretty well.

Challenges

From the start we knew there were a host of legal issues we would have to address to move forward on this. We started by consulting with human rights lawyers who already worked with asylum seekers, many of whom were very supportive of the idea and offered to help. However, although they recognised that employment was important, it was never urgent and so we spent a lot of time waiting for answers as other more pressing issues such as forced deportations, summonses to the detention centre in Holot etc. took preference. Furthermore many of our legal questions were less to do with asylum seekers but more with the concept of setting up a platform which is still somewhat of a grey area in Israeli law. While we saw ourselves as a platform simply connecting between job seekers and potential employers we were told that Israeli law may not see us as such and thus we could be found liable both to the worker as an employer if labour law was infringed in any way and to the home owner if anything was broken/stolen. Insurance companies did not want to cover us as the risks where quite high.

We looked at a few options for our business model, the easiest would be to register as a human resource company but the costs associated with this where so high that we would find it difficult to pay the decent wages that were part of the goal of the social enterprise. We also didn’t want the liability associated with this option. The next option was to be an agent for which we had to apply for a special licence to serve as a “match-maker” however the problem with this route emerged when we discovered to get such a license requires a special “heter” (exemption) from the ministry of interior if we were working with foreign workers, a route that looked unrealistic and lengthy given the government’s not-so positive attitude to “infiltrators” (their official term of asylum seekers). A commercial law firm finally agreed to take us on pro-bono however after a month of me calling them each week for updates they eventually got back to us that they had decided the case was too complicated, refugee/foreign worker law was not their speciality and we should go back to human rights lawyers… Essentially we were back to square one!

First Pivot

So we decided to pivot, the lawyers had all recommended taking ourselves out of the picture as much as possible so as to limit our exposure and liability.  We thought we would try an open market place, where asylum seekers could post their profiles and potential employers could interact with them directly to set appointments, rate and get feedback. We even had a generic platform (Sharetribe) that seemed to provide all the features we needed. However when I went back to the cleaners with this idea, none of them agreed to posting their profile on line. They had happily given me their pictures and personal information previously which they trusted me to share with potential customers but they were less willing to have that information publicly available online. In retrospect this is perfectly rational for various reasons: a. Eritreans are naturally suspicious having lived in an Authoritarian regime and there are still various rumours of spies within the community here in Israel, b. The Israeli government hasn’t exactly given asylum seekers reason to feel secure and it’s understandable that many would not want to post their profile online for all to see and c. Although people were happy working as cleaners to earn an honest living they didn’t necessarily want to broadcast this fact, many have university degrees or are leaders within the community and found it belittling to advertise themselves as cleaners. So once again it felt like we were at a dead- end.

Final Pivot

Unsure how to proceed, we decided to revisit our goals in setting this venture up. From the start I wanted this to be a social business because I believe this is the most sustainable approach. I wanted to find a way to generate enough profit to at least support a salary and ideally to develop an app based on commissions so that this venture could keep running on its own and not be based on donations, which could better serve some of the more pressing needs/weaker individuals within the community. I also realised for this to work it would have to be done properly, eventually offering training, sending reminders, coordinating feedback etc. This is something that requires funding and so I thought (and still think) having a business model was the way to go. But given the lawyer’s advice it was very hard to do these things without putting ourselves at risk of being sued. However we also recognised at the start that at the very minimum if we could provide a few decent jobs for a few people it was worth trying.

Looking back over the past months, we did that, we have helped a handful of people to find full time jobs, recorded over 300 hours-worth of work in the first 2 months pilot and had some incredibly inspiring reviews of people who were extremely happy with their cleaners. I was also cooperating with another cleaning company who has employed on a part time basis a number of asylum seekers we had referred to them. At this stage not a cent had crossed our hand (although we had a few thousand sheckels of pledged donations as commission and approval for a matching grant of up to $5000 for a crowd-funding campaign which we are yet to use). It seemed given all the complexities that if we could simply make recommendations we could help people find work without all the headaches of setting up a business where we kept hitting brick walls. So the week before Rosh Hashana I sent out an update to our customers and supporters explaining our pivot and that from now on we will not be directly coordinating cleans but would be happy to send recommendations of vetted cleaners for anyone that emails us or posts on facebook. We would be taking no commission, but recommended paying cleaners a minimum of 50nis directly and coordinating with them for future cleans, our facebook page also contains details and links for paying Btuach Leumi (social security) and other requirements for employing asylum seekers on an ongoing basis. We asked in return only that people post recommendations when they are happy with their cleaners.

Where we are today and lessons learned

This is basically where we are today, this is by no means a perfect system and to be completely honest I am not sure how long it will last. Without me being directly involved, sending reminders, switching cleaners when someone can’t make it, etc. reliability is a problem. Since we are not doing training it’s also hard to ensure quality control. Another challenge with this model is it’s a bit of a chicken and an egg in that  I am not advertising/posting in social media as I have less reliable cleaners, there are therefore less potential clients (although a week doesn’t go by without me getting messages from people looking for cleaners) so it’s not enough for full time work. Most asylum seekers understandably would prefer a full time job (albeit poorly paid and long hours) over the instability of freelance work, so many of the good workers are already working full time.

With all these challenges, I find myself asking was it worth it? Could I have done it better? On one hand I think if I was a more experienced entrepreneur I may have been able to solve some of these challenges with the right lawyers and support. However I also think if I was a more experienced entrepreneur I probably would not have taken this on to begin with. That said, I don’t regret it, I have learned a great deal and the experience I have taken from this I have no doubt will be experience that will serve me well in other start-ups and ventures moving forward. To conclude, some of the key lessons and insights I presented at the conference last week:

• Don’t speak to lawyers: I put this in half jokingly, but it is something I have thought a lot about – perhaps if we had just gone ahead and taken the risk without worrying too much about the legal issues we would have been able to get a better sense of if this could work,aside from the legal issues. We would then have been in a better place to make the difficult decisions that would come later and more motivated to keep pushing to try find a solution if we already had a fully functional model.

• Too fast?  Immediately after finishing the do-athon we jumped ahead, I began posting on social media, recruiting cleaners and speaking about the venture at every opportunity. On one hand perhaps we should have slowed down, first spoken to the lawyers and figured out our business model and finer details before jumping right in. However when I think about this I don’t regret that we didn’t. I think if we had taken a more precautous and planned approach we may not have done anything and this would have remained an idea on paper. I also don’t regret speaking about this at every opportunity (although my friends might argue) because I gained so much insights and feedback from everyone I spoke to including some of the people I would least have expected it from, for any start-up I am involved in, in the future I think I will be equally open to sharing my ideas . (I also learned that the key is all in the implementation rather that the idea which wasn’t all that original so the concerns some have of others stealing your ideas worries me less.)

• Israelis were far more positive and supportive than expected: At the beginning one of the critical assumptions we worried about was whether  Israelis would be willing to have asylum seekers come into their homes given the stigma the media has created around them. However it soon became clear that this was not an issue for most. Once people understood that asylum seekers can work legally and we vouched for them, people were incredibly welcoming and some of the positive feedback we received from people who previously had no interaction with asylum seekers was enough to make the project worthwhile.

I also benefited immensely from various people who offered their help and support along the way, an incredible team that was formed at the do-athon, amazing graphic designers, lawyers, people in human rights organisations and various individuals who heard about the project and wanted to help out. I also benefited from incredible mentorship. If anything I was able to see the value of seasoned entrepreneurs and I got more out of some of the short conversations with mentors than a course in entrepreneurship. I am hugely in-debted to all the people who have helped along the way and I hope in the future to pay it forward by being equally as supportive to other aspiring social entrepreneurs.

• Social Business is a full time job – Start-ups are time consuming and all encompassing, so much more so when you choose to start a venture with a segment of the population that you would certainly not have chosen if you were after strictly business interests. I was lucky in that in my job I have flexible hours, but this is definitely something to take into consideration for anyone starting a social venture – however much time you think it will take, triple that expectation!

• Were we addressing a large enough need? This is undoubtedly my most important take-away.  I think before starting any future social business I will ask myself two key questions: 

Is the social impact worth my time?  - OR -  Is the profit potential worth the effort?

For this venture I knew from the start I was not in it for the profit but I wanted to do it for the social impact. However, in retrospect I am not sure in this case the social impact was worth the effort. While decent employment for asylum seekers is an issue, I learned from his experience that the employment is probably less of an issue than I had at first thought. People do work long hours for poor salaries and there are often instances of exploitation but people are working. Most of this population works on jobs that Israelis don’t want to do and so there is quite a large supply of work. The payment and conditions I wanted to offer were undoubtedly better but I am not sure sufficiently better that it warranted the effort and legal challenges I was encountering. Before going into my next venture I will definitely think long and hard about this question before jumping in.

• Finally - Once the Start-up bug bites – there is no going back… When I started this project people asked me if I was willing to quit my job for it, I told them straight – “No! I love my job and this is something I am doing on the side.” Now 6 months later something changed - I loved the adrenaline rush trying to set something up from scratch, spending hours trying to come up with a business model, working with people similarly inspired around the same vision and those “ah ha” moments when you get a sudden burst of inspiration. I am already on the lookout for my next idea or perhaps even better at this point, an exciting social start-up to be a part of as in addition to all the points above, If there is anything I have learned through this process it is that I still have plenty more to learn…

“Knowns” and “Unknowns” – Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities through Vanilla Farming in Tanzania (Next Billion)

Blog Published in Next Billion, October 29, 2014

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By Caylee Talpert, Deputy Director  of the Pears Innovation for International Development Program at Tel Aviv University who has been in Tanzania serving as a voluntary consultant for Natural Extracts Industries Ltd.

Rashid is a farmer I met in the Marangu region around Kilimanjaro, like his father and grandfather as well as the thousands of other farmers in the region he farms coffee, bananas and a variety of other vegetables. With declining crop prices, the income he earns from these crops is negligible and most of his proceeds go towards feeding his family.

Not far away in the Mamba area I met another farmer, Elisael who began cultivating vanilla two years ago. Its taken time for his efforts to bare fruit but next year he expects that the 50 vines on his one acre plot will produce a total of 100Kg of vanilla pods which at a price of $2.8 per kg should generate for him around $280. While this represents only a modest sum by western standards, it is enough to allow him to pay his children’s annual school fees or save for family emergencies. What’s more, it requires only a minimal investment to cultivate the crop and it’s not at the expense of any of his staple crops since the vanilla is intercropped, and he makes use of under-developed shaded land.

Only 2 years ago Elisael was no different to Rashid, back then neither of them could have even contemplated vanilla cultivation as a possibility. They would have had no way of knowing that the “naturally-sourced” global market is estimated at $240 million or that there is a growing interest in all-natural, organic and ethically sourced products globally. They also would not have known that in East Africa alone the untapped natural vanilla flavour market is estimated to be around  $1 million and is likely to grow rapidly with the rise of Africa’s emerging middle class, stimulating consumer demand for high-end products. Neither farmer would have had any idea of these trends, despite the potential to increase their income levels. Given their background and sources of information, this knowledge would have been completely unknown to them.

However nearby in the town of Moshi, a small father-son team saw the potential of this market. As a former Industrial Engineer and IADB expert , and computer engineer and McKinsey consultant, respectively, they certainly had the background and knowledge-base to recognize such a business opportunity. That is not to say they had all the answers, while they may have been able to crunch a few numbers, their “unknowns” where equally daunting; they knew little about traditional cultivation practices or how the sociological background of the farmers may effect their willingness and ability to grow this novel crop. 

It is the intersection of these “knowns” and “unknowns” where according to the Kirznerian school of entrepreneurship the greatest entrepreneurial opportunities are discovered, as when these two knowledge systems collide, new entrepreneurial ventures form, creating value for society at large.

Natural Extracts Industries Ltd. (NEI) is an example of such a venture that builds upon the co-founders’ business acumen and technical expertise and combines it with the local knowledge and on-the-ground experience of their Tanzanian partner to create new opportunities and shared value for all stakeholders. Since the company’s establishment in 2011 they have been working with farmers like Elisael to cultivate vanilla and other crops that are used as raw materials for natural extracts, in order to satisfy world demand for natural flavors, while improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in the region. While still a young company, NEI is putting into practice many of the best practices that have proven successful in running a social enterprise sourcing from the BoP with much of its core business model dependent on these strategies.

On the supply side, NEI currently works with 1200 farmers in the Mount Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Morogoro regions who receive ongoing training and workshops to increase quality, yield and production. In addition to the technical training, the farmers receive specialized training in areas such as group governance, savings, HIV/AIDS awareness and good nutrition to increase the social impact on the farmers.

NEI employs a model where they identify early adopters or “Champions”, who are generally older, well respected members of the community who in addition to growing their own vines visit and advise other farmers in the region. This approach is supported by research from Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI), which demonstrates the important effect of beginning with influential leaders for ensuring uptake among the broader community.  The company also works with local women’s groups where in addition to basic support in building trust and empowerment they are gradually introducing technical training on solar drying of raw materials necessary for NEI’s various other natural flavours such as mango and banana extracts. This provides additional income to supplement their livelihoods.

In terms of building the eco-system, NEI has established successful partnerships with USAID through the Tanzanian Agriculture Production Program (TAPP), who provide grants to subsidize the training of the farmers and subsidize the purchasing of the vanilla cuttings. This removes what would have been a significant barrier to entry and allows NEI to focus on the business side of getting their products to market.

NEI has set up a small factory near Kilimanjaro where they cure and process the vanilla centrally, thus ensuring a consistent quality product that adds value locally, creating additional jobs within Tanzania. They also address one of the greatest challenges to previous attempts to cultivate vanilla in the region, which failed because famers lacked an accessible market for their vanilla pods.

Finally, as leading BoP expert Ted London often reiterates one of the most important ingredients for success at the BoP is humility. NEI is continuously iterating and improving their business model, learning from everyone ranging from the small scale-farmers themselves to tapping into the various international support mechanisms available so as not to “re-invent the wheel”.

With successful cultivation underway, NEI’s next step is finding larger customers and the correct forums, distribution networks and retailers to get their products to market. They are looking for all potential customers interested in supporting this ambitious social enterprise by purchasing the all-natural, ethically sourced and high quality pods and extracts they produce. NEI welcomes feedback and interest from the Business Fights Poverty Community and is happy to share their own knowledge and experience with other aspiring social enterprises in this field. (Fore more information visit the Natural Extracts Industries Ltd. website.)

Vanilla Farmers, Maasai Warriors and Rastafarian Hotel Managers—A Great Professional Development Opportunity!

Blog as it appears on ROI/Schusterman Blog

Caylee Talpert is the Deputy Director of the Pears Innovation for International Development Program at Tel Aviv University, which is dedicated to making Israel an important source of innovation and innovative technologies for developing countries.

When I applied to use my ROI professional development Micro Grant for a trip to Africa, I was not 100% sure what I had in mind. All I knew was that I needed to “get into the field” and to spend a brief period taking part in the day-to-day workings of a social enterprise operating in Africa. I believed, as I wrote in my grant application, that this would enhance my work here in Israel supporting Israeli entrepreneurs developing innovations for the African context.

I came to Natural Extracts Industries Ltd (NEI), the social business where I spent the month of October volunteering, through an online advertisement. They were looking for someone with a background in either chemical engineering or marketing to fill a year-long position—neither of which I had experience in, and I actually was only looking for a short-term opportunity. Nevertheless, I liked the sound of this social enterprise, which works with over 1000 small-scale farmers in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania, so I e-mailed them. Within a week we had agreed that they would provide accommodation, and I would spend one month working on their business development and marketing strategy. With that, I booked my flight to Tanzania.

NEI’s primary focus is on assisting small-holder farmers to grow vanilla, a crop sometimes referred to as “Black Gold” given its relatively high value compared to other crops farmed in the region. Despite Tanzania’s ideal climate for vanilla, only a handful of farmers had previously cultivated it, and many attempts had been unsuccessful as a high degree of training is required to successfully grow high quality vanilla pods. (Read my article on Entrepreneurship and Vanilla Farming in Business Fights Poverty for more details).

Working at NEI has been a fantastic learning experience in that it has taught me a great deal about some of the difficulties in running a social business in Africa. NEI has all the challenges inherent in any start-up, such as finding investors or access to markets, as well as problems we don’t even think about here in Tel Aviv, such as a stable electricity supply. (While I was there, the company had been without electricity for over a month and had to halt production—part of the reason for which may have been the fact that they were unwilling to pay bribes to the electricity workers, who told them they “were hungry” when they came to inspect the problem).

However, in addition to all that I learned from my time at NEI, I also learned a great deal just from being there and meeting some of the fascinating people working in Moshi where I was based. From social entrepreneurs working on developing income-generating opportunities for out-of-school youth, to an impact investor investing in small-scale agricultural businesses, living in Tanzania for a few weeks gave me great exposure to many of these interesting people. For example, the host with whom I stayed was a woman who had left her high-power career as an executive in a large Spanish telecommunication company to move to Africa and set up a school for vulnerable children. She is currently in the process of building a new structure so that they can move out of the church grounds where they are currently based. The new school will be made entirely out of plastic bottles, which the parents are obliged to help build in exchange for their children’s education.

As a result of a conversation we had one evening over dinner, I am now working with this woman to develop a new project to send a group of students with relevant expertise in agriculture, irrigation and business to Inkoma village in the Serengeti (where her business partner is from) to develop a proposal for increasing the sustainability of the village. The Inkoma Village has very fertile land, but little is grown there partly because of a lack of knowledge and partly because elephants come to eat their crops (a quick Google search taught me that building bee hives in the fences could be a good deterrent to the elephant problem). What’s more, there are a number of five-star lodges in the area, many of which get their produce delivered from the nearest market, a few hours' drive away. This, therefore, presents a real opportunity to create sustainable, income-generating agricultural projects for the villagers.

During my last week, we traveled seven hours to visit the Imkoma Village, which was an incredible experience in community development at its core. We met with the village elders and government officials to gain their approval, listened to community leaders speak about their challenges—which ranged from supporting vulnerable children whose parents had died of aids, to preventing wild animals from eating their livestock—and met with some of the lodge owners to understand what work was already being done within the community. Until then I had been in Moshi, which some had described as “Africa-light,” with its high proportion of exports and many tourists who come to climb Kilimanjaro. However, in this Maasai village of around 3500 people, there was no mistaking the fact that we were in Africa. On our second day, on the way to meet the regional leaders, we encountered hundreds of Maasai warriors in dispersed groups along the road, dressed in their traditional hunting gear and carrying spears. We were told that cattle had been stolen and they were going to find the culprit. Later, as we sat in one of our meetings waiting for the representatives (who never came), we heard news that the guilty party had been found. I asked what would happen to them, and was given the vague answer that it depends if they surrender or are “big headed.” At this point, I was given a look by my colleague that made it clear that it was better not to ask more questions—as they say TIA! (This is Africa).

As the month drew to a close, I headed to Zanzibar for a final weekend of vacation before I flew back to Israel. But even this beautiful island turned into an interesting learning experience. On the ride from the airport, we were stopped three times by police clearly looking for bribes; one of these times, I noticed the taxi driver discreetly handing the officer a crumpled up note. On the same ride we also stopped for coconuts and killed a chicken that ran into the road... I then stayed at a “hotel” called Mama Fatima—run by a group of local Rastafarians called Black Moon, Eddie Murphy and Spiderman—where a large percentage of the very low rate went to a local social business called Business4Africa, which sounded great.

My lesson learned here was that Rustas may make great music, but they are not necessarily the people you want running your hotel—especially when you want to leave and there has been no water for the past 12 hours to take a shower after a day at the beach, or you return one night and your key snaps in the lock, but the guy on duty is too high to be all that productive in solving such problems in a rush.

To conclude, my trip was a great learning experience. I learned a great deal about working with small-scale farmers and about some of the challenges of establishing a social enterprise in Africa, and shared some of the sense of fulfillment when I saw the real impact this enterprise is having on the farmers with whom they work. Beyond my work, the experience of just being in Tanzania—experiencing things for myself and meeting some of the great people I was exposed to—has left me with many new ideas and a potential project in the pipeline (you can guess what my plans for my 2015 Micro Grant may be used for). Finally, if I ever open a social-enterprise hotel, I probably won’t hire a Rusta to be my hotel manager.

• Caylee Talpert's blog
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