Inspiration galore at 8 am

Thursday began with a 7.30 cab ride to a breakfast meeting organised by the Hainault Business Park Ltd. They are an intermediary organisation's dream!
Watch our video here.

Hainault is only 10 minute's from bustling Ilford, Essex, where we have established ourselves this week. (Cranbrook Rd, where both the Sacoma offices and our Hotel are, is called Sacoma Street by our group.)

Imagine a business park. Warehouses, recycling plants, offices. Car sales. It is an industrial area, and as we are learning this part of London has been one of the most depressed boroughs for many years.

The business park had been a place you do not want to bring your clients. Ruffians caused havoc constantly. Cars were ignited. Rubbish was everywhere, the place looked a mess. The business owners paid rates but nothing was ever given back to them.

Five years ago the business owners realised that if they worked separately to change this situation, no change would happen. "United we stand, divided you fall" became their motto and they established themselves as a Business Improvement District. They were inspired by New York Mayor Guiliani's Broken Window Policy - the idea that if there are broken windows in a building more people will throw bricks to break more windows. To stop people from breaking windows and creating disrepair, ensure that nothing is broken. The Mayor cleaned the underground, stopped people taking free rides on public transport, and created a community-based approach to ensuring that New York became safe.

Now the Business Park is safe and people are doing business with each other. The FUNDING for the change - the thousands spent on fencing, for example, came from matching funding. Whatever the owners themselves contributed, the association found matching money from the council and other public authorities. In today's meeting alone businesses volunteered 5000 pounds!

What made everything really possible was a great relationship with their bank, and with the police.

I am looking forward to hearing what our delegation go out of the meeting. Not only did we get a lot of input on how to run a great intermediary organisation, there were good contacts there. We met the people from Gateway to London - important for our exporter' contacts with partners in the UK.

Sacoma is doing a great job getting our delegation in touch with good business relations and with advanced intermediary organisations that inspire. The exposure visit is very valuable.
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A business improvement district (BID) is a defined area within which businesses pay an additional tax or fee in order to fund improvements within the district's boundaries. Grant funds acquired by the city for special programs and/or incentives such as tax abatements can be made available to assist businesses or to recruit new business. BIDs may go by other names, such as business improvement area, business revitalization zone, community improvement district, special services area, or special improvement district. BIDs provide services, such as cleaning streets, providing security, making capital improvements, construction of pedestrian and streetscape enhancements, and marketing the area. The services provided by BIDs are supplemental to those already provided by the municipality.^[1]

The lessons from Women's Business Development Association

The five delegates are with Perez Ochieng of Sacoma in Coventry, learning about the work of Women's Business Development Agency. Addressing us is Rachel Doyle, who is a women's enterprise consultant and has a business selling batteries. She described briefly a European project she is working on.

We are discussing mentoring. Although we will get the slides, let me share some points
- consider all parts of life, not just the business
- have flexible times so the client can be considered
- use safe and welcoming venues
- avoid business jargon
- move at a pace set by the client
- empower, build confidence and self-esteem
- gain and maintain two-way trust
- set ground rules

In other words, having coffee together works better than being strictly in an office environment.

CAWEE has its own mentoring tool. Perez Ochieng is also a professional mentor. It could be a good action to share mentoring tools between the group, as mentoring is an important part of the work of an intermediary organisation.

Anyone can become a member of the WBDA forum with resources for women entrepreneurs in UK but also abroad.

NIgest Haile of CAWEE reflects on day 2 in the UK

Nigest Haile, founder and director of CAWEE in Ethiopia, is leader of the Ethiopian delegation to the PROINVEST visit to Sacoma. Nigest is on the lookout for lessons to be learned from good practices in intermediary organisations. Chambers of commerce are a good place to start. She wants to observe how the chambers are accommodating women and what services they provide.