Micro-franchising workshop

•Young people in Morocco represent 44% of working-age population, and 51% of these are unemployed

• Near East Foundation (NEF) is a not-for-profit organisation who have established the “Empowering Youth through Entrepreneurship in Morocco “(EYEM) Project  to support young people in establishing their own employment throgugh entrepreneurship.

• An objective of the EYEM project is to “Introduce one Microfranchise for Youth Entrepreneurs”

Our CSC team is assisting NEF to meet this objective. We've been researching micro-franchising and also trying to understand the local conditions and the successful ventures so far,
We agreed with NEF that we would conduct a workshop in El Jadida with local staff and with local youth involved with the programs.

We arrived in El Jadida Wednesday mid-morning.
We started with a visit to the old town in El J and met a wonderful local association running lessons and sport for local school children and youth.

 We then had a fast lunch and rushed to set up the workshop.

… At 2pm there were only 4 guests outside the core team, our client recommended to start at 2.30pm as that was the time most people would arrive; and sure enough at 2.25pm there was an influx of people, the room filled up and in the end we had about 20 participants. Many of these had started their own businesses with the assistance of the EYEM project. And some represented local associations and Youth Council.

After a Welcome from our Client Host and introductions, we explained the purpose of the meeting – to select a micro-franchise or “business in a box” to pilot in the local Doakkala Abda region.

It is the 1^st workshop I’ve done which was in 3 languages – English, French and Arabic. We had a translator along and also Nisrine from DOT who is fluent in French and Arabic and our own Egyptian princess, Dina. Dina spoke in Arabic to present on what a m/f is and what the benefits are; then Krishnendu overviewed the International picture and the success factors which we’d drawn from this analysis. It became even more fun when we started the brainstorming – we’d decided to use the approach where each person is given some Post-it notes to write their ideas on. These were handed to one of our multi-lingual team who’d translate; we had runners taking translated Notes to the front, and sorters grouping the ideas into categories.

We then took a break – and I wish I’d taken my camera. The most beautiful array of pastries and sweet biscuits and a variety of drinks. I tried the local avocado milkshake which was delicious.

Everyone went back for more multi-lingual discussion and voting – at one point I looked around the room and there were about 4 animated discussions taking place, including our translator and DOT manager weighing the pros and cons of various ideas!! I took a moment to enjoy the level of engagement and animation and then we pulled it back together. A lot of terrific ideas – all of which we will document and have available for our Client. Four were selected to focus on and we then evaluated those against the key success criteria – providing social benefit, low cost, simple model, market capacity.

The workshop finished on time at 5.30pm and on a high note following the excellent discussions.  We thanked everyone, gave out some IBM souvenirs and I also gave out pens and key-chains from Australia which were very well-received. The obligatory group photos were then taken outside.