The Role of Community for Women in Business

?Kayana Create Opened its doors in March 2019. Previously, we had been hosting Candid Conversations: Circles for Women in Business since September 2016, and had successfully managed to convene and average of 120 women per event. ( 4/5 events annually pre pandemic)

We understood through experience that women hunger for community. I didn’t realize how much so this would play out when we first opened our doors, as I was basing this purely from my own experience of running small business as shared in, A Candid Handbook for Women doing Business in Kenya.

The need for community really stands out as I see various women capacity building workshops and seminars advertised on the social media platforms. We tend to see the same women attending and applying for the various opportunities being offered. I was at one such event two months ago and I decided to do an ad hoc poll by asking how many trainings the 35 or so women in the room had attended. More than half the room had attended over 10 trainings.

We can attribute the enthusiasm, by saying that perhaps each of the ten offered a different skills training for the entrepreneurs, but without the data we may then also say that the women enjoy hotel food,?but more compelling I believe is that the convening’s give the women a sense of community and an opportunity for peer to peer learning.

This got me thinking, what is the impact of community to the business growth of women owned enterprises? (increase in revenues,?and/or market). We at Kayana will begin to track this, as we continue to grow our membership. Some of the ways we are doing this is hosting smaller more intimate groups, based on the stage of business/ size of business. An example is our Kayana 10X businesses that got off to a great start in 2022 that has all ‘expert’ resources coming from within the businesses. Topics range from,?for example, how one business that has raised over 1,000,000 attracted investors – this is a blow by blow report that would never be shared on any socials,?but where the members could ask questions a simple as ‘How did you write that first email..?’ ?to the pros and cons of registering your business in Kenya or Delaware. We will be curious to see how a sense of community fosters more collaboration amongst complementing industries, which we anticipate will see growth in revenues.

Certainly at Kayana Create ,?we have seen the power of collaborating with Women Networks within our community. Working together as part of a larger eco system of support networks we are able to impact more women,?much faster. I am excited too for the opportunities that this collaboration has unlocked,?apart from The Very high level visits that give us an opportunity to articulate our vision : To see more Women run businesses within , offer meaningful work and decent pay to at least 10 people, We are able to collaborate for opportunities that would have seen us excluded from due to our small size. ?

The journey is long and the challenges many,?but here we still believe Small Business is Big Business and that is why we exist to support female run small businesses.

Links : https://candidbusinesswomen.co.ke/