Dakar Dragons - Empowering African Business Women

The 10,000 girls project started off with a little African girl asking Voila Vaughn 'Will you teach me?'

The Dakar Dragons project started off with Viola Vaughn asking Marieme Jamme 'Will you teach my girls business?'

'We don't want charity...' said Viola 'We don't want handouts....what we want is business know how and connections'

Viola has already taught her girls basic entrepreneurship and accounting as part of her wonderful 10,000 girls program based in Senegal. The funding has come from the girls making and selling things. They are already exposed to business thanks to Viola. The next stage in their evolution is for her graduates to become independent business women. Capable of creating and running a sustainable business venture of their own.

Viola also wants help to raise the bar on some of the product lines her girls have created to generate money to educate more than 3,000 girls so far. Some have the potential to become big money earners with the right nurturing and support from the graduates of her program.

With Viola the words 'small' and 'vision' are never to be seen together!!

So Viola asked the question and with a whole series of unlikely coincidences with a growing group of wonderful alturisic business people the Dakar Dragons was born (or should that be hatched!)

The Dakar Dragons project was inspired by Dragons Den which is a UK television program where business owners have to pitch their business to the Dragons in order to get some investment from one of the Dragons.

The Dakar Dragons aim is empowering African business women to be independent, confident, and self sufficient business women who choose to work together in business.

• They will learn about various aspects of business from people who have been successful in doing it for themselves.
• They will get mentoring from people who have valuable experience and who want to make a difference.
• The best projects will get startup funding and support in raising money based on the merits of the business and not out of charity.

10% of the profits will go back to the Dakar Dragons project to fund other projects.

There is a saying 'You can give someone a fish and they will eat for a day - you can teach someone to fish and they will eat for life'.

The Dakar Dragons Project is more than just teaching individual African women to fish. Its about giving African women the tools to feed their families and the ability to have a quality of life without leaving the country they love. Its about teaching a wide group of women skills and know how which will be passed down and spread throughout the community. Its about helping to stimulate free enterprise and the creation of wealth that will impact whole communities.

We are in Senegal working with the girls.  If you would like to know more about how it is going visit our Dakar Dragons site: 

www.dakardragons.org

Best wishes

Richard White