Ismaila

Ismaila started a welding business in 2015 with a grant he received following a business competition run in the village by The Marlborough Brant Group (funded by the Arkleton Trust).  The grant allowed him to purchase a building container to use as a storage unit for his business, plus one welding machine.  He had previously received technical training in welding. 

In 2016 Ismaila was trying very hard to establish his business but was always running from one thing to another, had little idea how to cost a job, and was struggling to make ends meet.

After the training programme, Ismaila felt confident with finance, gave more time to customer satisfaction, and became more systematic in managing his welding workshop. He says he keeps referring to the programme notes and then targets particular customers, looks at the benefits required for that customer group and “comes to their level”.  

He had more customers: “jobs keep on coming”.  He thinks about his competitors and compares what they are doing, and makes sure he stays in front.  He competes by giving quality products and being on time.  He now has several employees.

With more staff he now delegates, releasing him to manage the business more effectively.  He said that he talks to the staff every morning with “a smiling face” and shares out the work.  He reflects that before the training he didn’t plan but now understands planning, focusing on one contract before moving on to the next job.  Each staff member also has their own area of work.  

He now uses a cashbook, with all cash sales written down and receipts kept for expenses and all savings going into the bank.   He has also registered his business with the authorities and pays tax on staff salaries.  He lists all costs and knows what profit he has made from each job.

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Lamin

Lamin, a school teacher at Gunjur Upper Basic School, had a small shop at the village marketplace where he offered multiple services including photocopying, typing, printing, copying film / music CDs for sale, battery charging and also cutting men’s hair (known as ‘barbing’).  He did all this in a shop of about 3 x 2 metres!  

At the time his school salary was divided one third to his parents, one third for personal use and one third saved.  He studied commerce at school.  After electricity came to Gunjur in 2014 he saw the gap in the market for his business and used his savings, along with a micro-loan, to buy the equipment.  His school and students often needed photocopying, which could not be done in Gunjur until the arrival of electricity and his shop.   He had often talked about having a second shop but could not afford to stop teaching to just run his business.  

Then he came on the training programme.  Since then, Lamin has taken on a second, much larger shop and is separating barbing and office work.  He is much in demand, constantly increasing his portfolio of offerings, recently introducing printing on tee shirts.  He is training his brother, Jarju, to work with him.  Through the BE REEL programme he feels he has a much better ability to manage money and especially to juggle income and expenses effectively.  As the business grows he plans to share the workload increasingly with Jariu (who attended a later training programme with us).

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Ousman

Ousman is a trained cook with pastry as a speciality.  He worked in hotels for 11 years having left high school in 2005.  The salary was very low and he could not make ends meet so started his own restaurant in a shop opposite the main market in Gunjur.  

He serves English, African and Italian food.  However, common to most restaurants in Gunjur, there is generally one meal on the menu each day - often chicken.  In 2017 the restaurant was, in his words “sit down and takeaway” but it had no tables and chairs evident and the stove was in the same small space as the restaurant.

Through the programme, Ousman recognised the competitive advantage he has as the only professionally trained chef in Gunjur.  He reflected that the most important factors for his business are determination and love for what he does as he focuses carefully on customer needs.  For example, he developed ideas to have meals ready for delivery at 6pm to families to eat during Ramadan.  He now focusses on take-away food, with clear advertising and fast delivery of external orders.  Customers know upfront what they will be charged and so he gets more return customers.  In one contract he provided all meals for 40 people, for a fortnight.  He involves Lamin the trader, another case study here, to design the menu layout for each day.

He started the restaurant with his own savings.  He knew the cost of his main product, however, he had no real idea of his other costs or of managing cash flow.  He now takes time to work out what to charge so he covers all costs effectively.  He is managing to generate savings and has opened a business bank account.  He plans to train staff to cook and improve the shop to make it a safe place to eat.  

He feels he definitely has increased customer numbers. He summarized that his business is now about“Tasty food, delivery fast and on time, consistent and well costed.”

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Famara

28 years old Famara NB Jatta is a young poultry farmer who started his business in 2017.  He has moved to a small compound off the main coast road, in the bush on the outskirts of Gunjur / Kartong.   He moved here because he said he had to have somewhere for his chickens.  

He originally had some training in how to raise poultry and has made his own incubator.  During the BE REEL training he explained that when he is incubating eggs he has to turn them every four hours day and night as his incubator is manual. 

Before the COVID pandemic he used to supply local hotels with eggs but that business has stopped, with the hotels being closed to tourists.  With the smaller amount of sales he can now make locally from his egg sales all the money goes to feeding and caring for his chickens.  His other source of business income prior to COVID was to sell day old chicks over the border in Senegal.  Again this business was curtailed as the borders with Senegal were closed due to the pandemic.  He has changed to selling chicks locally, but the local market wants the chicks at three weeks old which increases his costs, the total cost of which is hard to pass on.  The third string to his business is selling chickens as meat but this is more limited depending on whether there are religious festivals when there is more demand.  Whilst his Business was affected by COVID 19 pandemic Famara is determined and highly motivated to grow his business to the next level, if possible, to expand the business not only to increase his customer base but also to generate  some additional income for his business.

Famara finished senior school in 2015 and has had no further formal training. Famara attended the Be Reel Business training in May/June 2021 where he learned business skills and knowledge which are according to him “not only essential but also crucial to the growth of my business”. According to Famara this is the first business training opportunity of this nature he has had and what he learned most from it was how to manage finances and the development of Business plan. “I am the happiest man after attending BE REEL programme this year. I think am going to pay programme fee, but I was surprised that the training this good is free of charge”

Famara also attended the first knowledge sharing event on pricing where he shared the costs of his business with the rest of the participants, in an example of how to work out the unit price for each strand of his business. From this he and others learnt how different parts of his business can contribute more to his profit margin and some less so.  Also when looking at the risks in some aspects of the business that the profit can easily turn to loss.  Famara is highly motivated to do business and his next move is to grow his business to the next level, if possible, to expand the business and to increase his customer based to generate more income for the business.  

Famara has a strong desire to become successful entrepreneur and one of his strategic objectives is to create decent employment opportunities for himself and for other young people in the community. Famara works closely with an old school friend who also lives in Gunjur – Abdoulie Barrow.  Abdoulie had no previous work experience with poultry but has a background in construction and was a sportsman from school - travelling to other countries to compete.  He lost his eyesight four years ago due to untreated glaucoma.  He is married with children (3 years and 11 months).  Famara gave him some training in raising poultry and his wife  and sister help him with the business.  His chickens were stolen a year or so ago.  Some Dutch people who heard about this bought him 350 more chickens.  They are not laying yet but he will sell the eggs in due course.  Abdoulie also attended the training workshop and shared knowledge event on pricing.

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Mahawa

Mahawa Touray is a 24-year old single mother.  She completed senior school in 2007 but has very poor spoken English.  She lives with her family of 15, including one disabled person.  After school she was unable to secure employment, so four years ago she started her own micro-business as a food vendor.  She has set up her stall near the market square in Gunjur. Her main product is homemade sandwiches.  Like most of the young entrepreneurs who are running a micro business in the community, Mahawa   has never attended any formal or informal business training in the past. One of the other participants at the training commented that he travels an extra distance just to get sandwiches from Mahawa because the filling she makes for her sandwiches is so good!

She is highly motivated to develop her business as a result she attended both the Micro Business training workshop in May / June 2021.  Following this she also attended a shared learning event on pricing.  According to her both training events assisted her to revise her business approach and what she learned most during the training was the marketing and the calculation of unit cost which helped her to know the actual costs and the profit margin for her business.  

She described the training events as “very successful as the knowledge and skill gained from the training is huge and will further help me to develop my business”.  

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Arokey

Motivated to undertake a micro-business purely to create an employment opportunity for herself. Her dream is to transform her life from a highly dependent housewife to a financially independent woman.  She believes that the wealth that she will generate from her business will help her to support herself and her family to reduce the burden on her husband’

42-year-old Arokey Touray is a female entrepreneur who began her entrepreneurial journey about five years ago and made good progress over the period.  She is progressing well as she has been enjoying a large customer base in the local community. Arokey is working extremely hard to support herself and her family while trying to be financially independent. Arokey is selling mainly fashion and cosmetic products to her customers making cash sales while also accepting   credit sales for some items, but usually charges some additional fees for this. She only provides the credit facility to   her trusted customers in the community. She sells by hawking from house to house to meet her customers but charges some extra fees to cover her cost and earn a decent margin.

She is a mother of seven including five girls and two boys. She values and loves children very much.  As a mother she always looks after her children and regularly monitors their   performance at school and supports them to study hard at home. She was a full-time housewife and unemployed for several years before undertaking her hawking   business in the community.

In 1990 Arokey left school in form four as she could not continue with her formal education due to marriage.  She later pursued an adult literacy program with the Trust Agency for Rural Development (TARUD) in 1995.  Where she did some informal education she did well, and her performance earned her a good certificate which eventually led to her first employment. She was offered a job shortly after completing this program and was employed by TARUD.  She worked in this position for two years until her contract expired. Her primary tasks during this time were to assist female students and to promote girl-child education in the community which was not encouraged at that time. She has contributed greatly toward the promotion of girls’ education and has encouraged many parents to send their female children to school.

Arokey has also received teaching related training organised by Gunjur Project Association. It was because of her strong commitment and dedication, in 2014 she became contracted by the Gunjur Project Association once a week as an adult literacy teacher. Her role is to teach some elderly women and young ladies literacy and numeracy skills in the community of Kajabang, West Coast Region. She is still fulfilling this role at the same time as running her micro business in the community. She has a deep passion for this job as she is ever ready to support the local women to unlock their potential.

Her biggest challenge includes, but is not limited to, debt recovery as she usually offers credit to some of her trusted customers. Unfortunately, in most cases her customers usually do not pay her on time making re-stocking very difficult for her. COVID 19 and the current inflation levels has seriously affected her business as people’s incomes were reduced and therefore her customers spend less on items such as fashion and cosmetics. Unfortunately her products happened to be one of those that people are not very willing to buy at this point in time.

Another challenge that she is currently facing is that hawking involves moving items from one place to another and at times when the goods are heavy it becomes   difficult to carry them.  She is now planning to open a shop at a strategic location to supply goods that her customers want.

Prior to joining the BE REEL micro business training in November 2022, she had attended multiple training events, but none were specific to business training.  The training has helped her as she developed some new business skills such as record keeping, marketing and customer attraction. She has learned the term ‘margin’ for the first time as she previously thought that all revenue generated by her Business was profit.  According to her the most interesting part of the workshop was the use of some practical examples, drama acts, and group work and presentation which, according to her, boosted her understanding through learning collaboratively with others. She has learned and  developed some  confidence in public speaking. She   is now able to separate her business from her personal income. Arokey has participated in post training activities including the sharing event on basic record keeping and a enjoyed the support visit program.

Arokey is a strong advocate for women and girls’ education as she believes that girl’s education should be prioritized equally to reduce the wide gender gap in the community.

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Edrisa

31 year old Edrisa Sawaneh is a tailor and a native of Tanji in Kombo South, West Coast Region, The Gambia.  He is married and blessed with four children, all of them are boys.    Sadly, one of his sons drowned in in the lake last year and passed away at the age of nine years.  Edrisa left school at the seventh-grade and was unable to continue with his Education due to his family’s financial difficulties. Edrisa has never attended any formal tailoring training or a vocational school. He acquired his tailoring skills through informal apprenticeship training before he finally opened his tailoring workshop in 2009.  It took him almost two years to fully establish his workshop in 2011 as he   could not secure all the required materials at the initial stage of his operation.  He is passionate about Tailoring and specializes in making clothes for women and girls. Edrisa was motivated to open his tailoring workshop to create self-employment opportunities for himself and for other young people. He is currently training six young people, ages ranging from 14- 22 years.

Edrisa, like many young Gambians, attempted to migrate to Europe in search of greener pasture as he believed that there were limited opportunities for him in the Gambia. His impression was that Europe is better and thus he would make lots of money and at the same time have a decent life and be able to support his family through remittances.  In late February 2016 he embarked on one of the riskiest and dangerous irregular migration journeys, commonly known as ‘the backway’. His desired goal was to reach European soil, albeit illegally.   He financed his journey from the little savings that he made from his tailoring workshop, but later also sold one of his machines while in Libya.  Edrisa was encouraged by some of his colleagues who had made it to Italy by using a similar route, and the impression that they gave him was that everything is okay for them.

According to him he never knew that his journey would turn out to be one of his worst nightmares.  His dream of reaching Europe ended in his arrest, detention and jail without trial by Libyan authorities. Edrisa made three consecutive attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy but none of them was successful.

He paid exorbitant amounts of money to the people smugglers to facilitate his crossing to reach his final destination. His first arrest came when he boarded an overcrowded boat trying to cross to Italy but unfortunately, the boat was intercepted by the Libyan coastal guards, and they were returned to Libya. He and other illegal migrants were jailed in one of the isolated prisons and they were denied the opportunity of seeing a lawyer.

The journey was too hostile for Edrisa as he was left stranded in Libya for two years and was jailed in three different prisons during this time.  His family in The Gambia paid a ransom for him to be released from one of the prisons.  He and other illegal migrants including some Gambians broke out of one of the overcrowded prisons and narrowly escaped.  After his escape he realized that his life could be in danger, and he could be arrested and send to jail again.

He thus understood that reaching Italy was almost impossible for him and there was no option but to cancel his journey. After staying in Libya for almost two years, he voluntarily decided to return to The Gambia in December 2018. He financed his return trip to Niger but later received assistance from the international Organisation for Migration (IOM) to facilitate his return to The Gambia by a bus.

Since his return from the illegal journey, he has never received any form of assistance, either cash or kind from the Gambian Government, the IOM or even from other NGOs set up to help returning migrants.  He approached IOM for the re-integration support package, but the condition attached to the grant was that he should undertake poultry farming.  He asked them to consider changing his support package to tailoring but has received no response to date. He is trying to focus on his tailoring workshop. He was frustrated and felt that he was being rejected in local society because he failed to reach Europe after spending massively in his journey.  He is trying to re-integrate into society but recognizes that this process will take time.

Edrisa borrowed an amount of ten thousand Dalasi from his friend to buy a second-hand sewing machine to re- start his tailoring workshop. He is now operating and gradually regaining his customers based in the community. Despite being short of some basic tailoring materials he is planning to expand his business, to move into a bigger workshop, buy additional machines, and to apply for his own business electricity meter.

Prior to attending the BE REEL training, he had never participated in any business training in the past. His participation in the BE REEL workshop helped him to learn some basic business skills such as record keeping, marketing skills, big three ideas and public speaking.  He came to know BE REEL through a friend who also benefited from BE REEL training.

He has already received some support visits from the BE REEL staff and has attended a knowledge sharing event on basic record keeping where he learned collaboratively with his colleagues.  According to him BE REEL business training was the first major business training opportunity that he has attended since his voluntary return from Libya. The training has supported his re-integration process into society according to him.

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Mamajang

Mamajang Camara is from a village called Tanjeh, a coastal fishing center located in the Western Region of The Gambia in a district called Kombo South. He is a 32 year old married man with no children of his own but has four adopted children and he is living in the family compound in which he is the breadwinner. He was left junior secondary school at grade 9 level. He had to drop out from school because of his family financial condition at a time. Mamajang decided to learn tailoring at a young age.

He learnt this skill informally from his boss for four years serving as an apprentice. He also worked as a Radio presenter at City Limit FM for seven years, Westcoast Radio for two years, and he presented on talk shows and education programmes. Mamajang learnt freelance journalism at Insight Training Centre. Afterwards he served as a trainer at Insight Training Centre. He now has his own tailoring workshop in Tanjeh where he has five trainees under him, and he also accepts some internship trainees from the Insight training center.

Mamajang came to know about BE REEL micro-business development training through his friend who is also a trainee of BE REEL. He is among the workshop six group of people who attended training in 2021. According to him he has several skills’ training as mentioned above but he never had any such business training before he started his business.

Mamajang said the training came at the right time for him because he was thinking how to effectively manage his business and this free business training opportunity came and he decided to join. He said indeed the training has benefited his business a lot after attending.

According to him the training helped him to be more focused on his business because he learnt from the training that being a focused businessman helps you succeed, and strongly believes this statement simply because he realized that his business was disturbed because he was doing too many things alongside it. After training, he decided to forgo the Insight training centre where he works as trainer for his business. He also said that thanks to the BE REEL programme he is now keeping records of his business transactions, his records are up to date, and he is also able to save some money for the business and himself. He says that these are all possible because of the regular knowledge sharing events and support BE REEL rendered to us.

Mamajang’s business was seriously disturbed during the early start of the wet season. This was because his house and his family house collapsed because of the heavy flooding witnessed in the Gambia this year. According to him, he spent almost 50 thousand dalasi from his personal and business savings to rebuild their houses. Most of the time during this difficult time he closed his business to join the people who were helping rebuild the houses.

Because he closed his business, he started registering low sales and lost some customers. He said that he was lucky he paid 3 months’ rent up front before the flood incident. If not, he would not be able to pay his workshop rent. Currently his business is fully operating, and he is trying to recover from the impact of the flooding but slowly since the economic situation is badly affected by ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Covid-19, and high inflation. According to him, he now takes trainer job with S&S Training Center as a trainer in tailoring so that he can earn more to support his business to get its strength rebuilt as well as to support his family.

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Yusupha Darboe

Yousupha is a young business entrepreneur residing in a small remote coastal town called Gunjur which is located in the West Coast Region of The Gambia. He is 39 years of age, married with two children. Yusupha is trying to change the common belief in the minds of most of the young people in the Gambia, which is that without traveling to the Western world, they will not make it. According to him, around 2017 he tried to travel to Europe in search of a better life for himself, not through the common ‘backway’, but through buying a travel visa from individuals who convince young people here that they can help them to travel to Europe. Yusupha lost 75,000 dalasi in this process which he tried to recoup but it was impossible for him to get his money back from the individual he was dealing with at that time.

After three years, Yusupha started his business with the remaining money he had and that amounted to 50,000 dalasi. According to him, he started with a bundle of second-hand clothes and a bag of Kola nut. When asked why he undertook that business, he said that he was motivated to do this business because his father was doing the same business when Yusupha was very young and had many costumers, so he believed that if he did the same business, and used the same space as his father, he will make good start. Today he is selling several varieties of cereal crops including sorghum, millet, groundnut, kola nut, bitter cola and several groceries.

Yusupha came to know about the BE REEL micro-business development programme through a friend who attended the training and expressed the importance of the training to him. He attended the main business training in November 2021 and then several other sharing events and had support visits from BE REEL staff. According to him, he got a lot of benefit from this programme which is helping his business. It is because of this training he is now able to keep records of his business transactions, build good customer relationships, and has registered his business. He now feels that he has a clear picture of his business and a better understanding about general business situations simply because of the programme.

Although his business is making progress in term of making good sales, he has a challenge in transporting his good from up-country to his business place because of distance and a dishonest delivery truck driver who ran away with his money. Therefore, he is currently not fulfilling the demand of his customers. He wants to have his own delivery van to change this story for a more successful business story.

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Mariama Jammeh

27-year-old Mariama M. Jammeh started her banking career one year after she attended BE REEL Micro Business training because of COVID and the downturn in the economy making her business less viable. She secured a full-time job with Trust Bank Limited, one of the leading commercial banks in the Gambia. She started as an intern for several months before being officially appointed as a teller.  She has been making good progress since her appointment as a teller and received several promotions including to being a senior class banker.

A grade 12 graduate who had gone on to tertiary education, Mariama had also got two years working experience with Vision Real Estate. She had started as an estate agent, rose to be a cashier and then an Executive Market officer. She was also running a micro business for several years before joining BE REEL micro-business training.

The Covid 19 pandemic adversely affected Mariama’s business due to the restricted movement of people and as a result she had low sales and limited margins during this period. This was because her customers could not afford to buy much as their incomes were also affected.  Also she failed to recover a large sum of her credit sales at this time. Her Business registered a further shock during the recession because the exchange rate went up and she used the US dollar to order products from China. The US Dollar was appreciated rapidly against the Gambian currency making it too expensive for her. She explained this situation to her customers and in due course increased the prices of her products to cover the expenses to make a reasonable margin. However, her business was making a loss at the time.  It was therefore after the pandemic that she secured a job with the bank and started to regain her financial position and gain some savings. She was then able to use part of her salary to re-establish her micro business. Mariama is happy that she is a full-time employee and currently supporting her extended family from her monthly salary and from her business earnings.

Despite starting a new career in Banking in 2022, Mariama has the passion and commitment to run her micro business as she is involved in buying and reselling of fashion materials such as shoes, clothes and other cosmetic items and her business is now progressing well. Her biggest challenge is balancing her banking job with that of her micro business. She recently appointed her sister to look after her business, but she still handles the record keeping for herself to track the daily income and expenses of her business.  Prior to attending the BE REEL micro-Business training, Mariama was not keeping proper records of her business and selling many items on credit.  After the training she realized that this was unhealthy for the business as it retards the progress of her business.  It was only after the training she started to keep the cashflow records of her business. During the training she learned some basic business skills such as pricing, customer orientation and managing money. She is currently applying these skills to effectively manage her micro business as well as at her banking job.

Mariama was a changed person after the training because she gained some useful skills during the training such as record keeping, customer orientation and pricing. These skills have really helped her to develop her business. She can handle her customers well and she learned these skills from BE REEL before securing a full-time job with the bank as a teller. The best bit of the training for her was customer orientation and record keeping. She attended several sharing and networking events.  She wants BE REEL to assist her with further business education so that she can learn new skills to develop her business further.

She wants to expand and develop her business to another level.  She might consider the option of resigning from her banking job to focus more on her business. Mariama wants to be self employed rather than to be employed by someone or an institution. She also wants to transform her micro business into a medium- size enterprise, she is happy with her job but also thinking about her business too.

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Omar B. Janneh

21 -year-old Omar B. Janneh is running a Barber shop in Gunjur, Kombo South, he learned this skill informally through his father, who was a renowned Barber in the community. Omar has a great passion to undertake barbing as his career and he used to assist his father as a child. Omar is a migrant returnee after his attempt to reach Europe via Libya was unsuccessful.  He opened his Barber shop in 2022, a few months after his return from Libya.

In 2021 he dropped out of school at Grade 10. He has not attended any further training since then until the BE REEL training.  In mid-2021 Omar embarked on an irregular migration journey commonly known as ‘the backway’.  His intention was to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. This journey was very hostile for him, and he ended up being stranded in Libya for more than a year. What motivated him to undertake this journey was the limited opportunity available for him in Gambia, severe family pressure and other social issues which he has never wanted to disclose.  While in Libya he made several attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, but none of his attempts were successful.  Omar, who was at the time 19 years old, found it difficult to settle in Libya as the conditions were very tough for him. His last attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea was blocked by the Libyan authorities who stopped him from boarding an overcrowded plastic boat after having paid his money for the trip.  He was informed a few hours later that the boat that he was trying to join had capsized and sank a few hours after departing from the Libyan coast. There was only one surviver.   Omar became even more desperate and hopeless in Libya, and he had no option but to voluntarily report himself to the International Office of Migration (IOM) office in Libya so that they could facilitate his repatriation to Banjul.

A few months after his return from the dangerous trip from Libya he started his own barber’s shop from the grant that he had received from IOM. This grant was given to him to support his reintegration into Gambian society. According to him the amount that he received from IOM was too small to start a proper business, but he managed to get his business going anyway.

He joined the BE REEL micro-business training in 2022. He is currently applying the skills that he learned during the training such as marketing, record keeping and using his tree-model to represent his business’s bigger ideas.

He has a great business location almost at the center of the market square and he is currently enjoying large numbers of customers. He generally earns doubles his average daily earnings during the weekend because he has many customers who like to come to him then. Many people have begun to know about him because of the excellent services that he has to offer to his customers. Omar is skillful and always makes his customers happy. As a result, most of his customers usually return to him with great feedback. He is generating new customers through referrals from some of his customers who recommend his great work to their friends and family.

He still believes that he can increase his customers base if he could go back to school to learn some additional barbing skills. His plan is to become a professional barber to attract more customers and to boost his business earnings.

He is happy that BE REEL considered him for the training opportunity. Omar has also attended several sharing events and he used these opportunities to network with participants from other workshops.

His plan is to upgrade his shop and to start buying and selling cosmetic products.  His next big move then is to open a bigger barber salon. His current challenges include limited materials as he needs to have recent generation electronic barbing machines, preferably ones that are rechargeable, at the same time using less electricity.  He knows that the machines that he is currently using consume lot a of electricity. He wants to replace those machines with rechargeable machines as electricity is so expensive.

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Mai Jallow

Mai Jallow is a single parent, widow and entrepreneur who is 45 years old and mother to two children, a boy and a girl. She lives in a village called Sifoe just on the edge of Gunjur in Kombo South District, the Gambia. She now has a fashion shop in Sifoe which is located on the highway to Brimaka. According to her, she started her business with selling perfumes and body lotions by hawking with her products on beaches like Sanyang, Kartong and Gunjur beach as well as in the community where she lives. She started the business with money she received from her late husband’s charity money that her and the kids shared. This amounted to six thousand dalasi, but she took three thousand dalasi for her family care and used the other three thousand dalasi to start her micro-business.

Before marriage and running her own business, Mai worked with Castle Petrol Filling Station for nine years. She started as a pump attendant for three years at their Brikama station and moved to the position of a station manager for another three-year period. She was later moved to Castle Petrol Station in Guinea Bissua in the same capacity and she worked there for two years. Her international exposure helped her to learn different business cultures and she received several experiences centring around people and their cultures.

She was transferred back to the Gambia to a petrol station in Sukuta where she worked for three years. During the same time she got married and resigned from her job to concentrate on her marital life and responsibilities until her husband’s death. After the death of her husband and observing all the necessary rituals, she decided to venture into micro-business to develop a livelihood for her family as a single mother, believing that this would help her to be independent.

She thought that hawking would support her family and allow her to engage into something for herself instead of sitting doing nothing. She did this business for one and a half years after which she opened a shop in the village of Sifoe. Her shop sells fashion clothes, shoes, body lotions and perfume and she has now been there for four years.

She came to know about the BE REEL micro-business development training through a sister who is a development worker living in Sifoe and together they both attended the business training in 2021. According to her the training was a dream come true for her because she did not have any business training before she ventured into business and the training was free for them to attend. She said the training helped her to better understand her business because of the topics she learned which are relevant to any business’s success.

According to her, the training helped her to understand her customers better, and know what they value. Also, the training helped her to start recording her business’s incomes, expenses and other financial transactions, and she realised that without this she might find it difficult to know in which direction her business was heading and what she needed to do about that situation. She said the training further helped her to have more confidence in her business. Above all, she said the training helped her to build a strong network with like-minded people in business and this helped her to learned from them during the sharing events. The support visits helped her to better understand her business’s record keeping because the BE REEL staff are always there to support her if she has any issue with business.

She has recently expanded her shop space because the business is making progress in terms of an increased customer base in the village, and their demand for different products entices her to increase the products range. She also wants to have a shop assistant who will help her at the shop when she goes out to get new stock from her suppliers in Serekunda or Banjul. She is planning to put a billboard at her shop entrance for more exposure, and she wants to decorate her shop.  But all these are challenges for her at the moment because of the amount of money she needs is not available whilst she is spending her savings on buying new stock to grow the business.

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