BusLanikaKaja
Lanika Kaja
My Business Consultant Training
Collaborated With A Business In The Developing World
Our team reviewed the economic, social, political, and environmental factors that impact our partner business to design a launch plan and identify how to bridge the gap between our business partner’s current and desired conditions.
Earned a Development Grant to Enact Solutions
In order to fund the proposed business, our team composed a detailed plan and pitched our proposal to request seed funding from the Leadership Initiatives Grant Committee.
Collaborated With Business Development Experts
After researching the socio-economic conditions facing our business partners, our team worked with the Nigerian development staff to create effective solutions to the challenges our business partner was facing.
Fatima Abubakar Tukur
About Fatima
From a young age, Fatima has been in love with tailoring and fashion. She grew up seeing her brother working as a tailor and doing an excellent job providing for his family, and from that moment, she believed that tailoring was the perfect job for her. With her motivation and inspiration to become a tailor, she underwent a 3-year apprenticeship with a local tailor shop and acquired essential skills to start her tailoring career. As the years passed, Fatima’s tailoring business continued to grow and support her newfound family.
To further her skill set, Fatima enrolled in the Federal Ministry of Labor and Employment Skills and Acquisition Center in Bauchi, where she was able to improve her skills and learn how to properly sew and style different types of women's and children's clothing style for nine months.
Fatima Abubakar Tukur
Business Goals
Fatima hopes her business will flourish and support her family’s and community’s growth and comfort, envisioning a future where her tailor business becomes a cornerstone of financial stability and communal progress. One of the goals she hopes to achieve from her tailor business’s growth is to support her children’s education and ensure they have enough food to eat without daily struggle, providing them with the necessary resources and opportunities to thrive academically and physically. With food security and education secured, she hopes to use her extra revenue to invest in her business and buy a more comfortable house to live in, as her family currently shares a single room, seeking a better living environment that offers privacy and space for her loved ones.
Outside of these personal and familial goals, Fatima wishes that her business’s success could also support the people of her community by training them and providing a means to establish their own businesses, fostering economic growth and self-sufficiency among her neighbors.
Fatima Abubakar Tukur
Obstacles
Though Fatima is deeply passionate about her work as a tailor, she faces significant challenges that hinder her ability to meet the growing demand for quality garments. One of her primary obstacles is the inadequacy of her work equipment, which limits her efficiency and capacity to fulfill orders promptly. Additionally, the lack of proper advertisement and visibility in the local community poses a barrier to attracting a steady stream of customers to her business.
Moreover, the competition from larger and more established tailoring shops in the area further complicates Fatima's efforts to expand her customer base. These shops often have better resources for advertising and customer outreach, placing Fatima at a disadvantage despite her craftsmanship and dedication.
Fatima Abubakar Tukur
Home & Family
Fatima was raised in a large extended family with her parents and siblings. Her parents have 12 children, including herself, and they live together in Bauchi state Nasarawa Jahun, fostering a close-knit environment despite the challenges of raising such a large family. Her father is a business owner of a textile shop at Muda Iawan Market, while her mother owns a small poultry business that operates from home.
Her parents ensured that all of their children were fed each day and had a good education. Currently, Fatima is 32 years old and living in Intermediate Quarters, Bauchi State, with her husband and three children. Her daily life consists of waking up early to get her children ready for school, preparing food for her husband, and going to her tailoring business because she currently operates the business from home in her living room.
Fatima Abubakar Tukur
Our Partnership
Fatima has partnered with Leadership Initiatives in the hope of achieving all her aspirations and dreams to help her family break out of the poverty cycle and aid her local community. She hopes that by partnering with Leadership Initiatives and its interns from the International Business Internship Program, the support that she has garnered will help her establish her own business and support her dreams, providing her with the resources, knowledge, and network necessary to turn her vision into a reality and make a lasting impact on her community's economic development.
In Fatima's words, "I hope that partnering with Leadership Initiatives would provide a great opportunity for me and my family. I am excited to be a part of this organization.”
My Grant
Proposal
The Business- U&A Tailoring is a growing business founded by Fatima Abubakar Tukur. The inspiration is her admiration and passion for tailoring that was rooted from her childhood; living amongst her family who loved tailoring and used their gift to provide for the local community.
Fatima wants to continue working on her dream that was ingrained by her family, thereby innovating her business for tailoring. Her vision is to create authentic tailoring service, enhancing clothes for women and children, and subsequently expanding on her skillset.
Our mission is to provide an exclusive outline and plan that involves logistics of infrastructure and influential tactics of marketing and advertising to further progress her business. It is our goal to ensure that U&A Tailoring is substantial and has the quality to exude longevity, so she can give back to her community in the several ways she sees fit. Fatima’s plan includes educating women through apprenticeships, as well as giving 20% of her profit to supply meals for students. Fatima’s personal vocation is to inspire and empower young women in her community, in order to provide for themselves as entrepreneurs and further build on communal wealth.
My Grant Proposal
Presentation
In the International Leadership and Business Internship, I worked directly with some of the world’s leading developmental experts in order to build my partners business and brand.
At the conclusion of this internship, our team pitched the final proposal to a panel of esteemed judges from the Leadership Initiatives Nigerian Development Team and the Leadership Initiatives Grant Committee. This formal pitch allowed our team to practice our skills and utilize our entrepreneurial toolkit, all while showcasing our efforts to transform the business we partnered with.
At the end of the pitch, we were able to receive feedback on our proposal for our business partner. Over the next year, our business partner’s venture will be made into reality and monitored for sustained success and growth.
Internship Highlights
- Business Meeting
- Egyptian Embassy
- Embassy of Chad
- Expert Assistance
Our team began the business development process by having a one-on-one Zoom call directly with our business partner,Fatima Abubakar Tukur, and our Nigerian project coordinator to ensure productive collaboration.
We learned more about their life, family, and desires for the proposed business venture, as well as the challenges they were facing. By discussing first-hand the challenges our partner faced, our team successfully and efficiently began to brainstorm solutions to launch her business.
Each morning we held constructive discussions about our ideas, the advice we received the day before, and the timeline necessary to begin implementing our ideas in real-time.
The on-staff project coordinators and business development experts helped facilitate the ideation process and ensured our team asked the right questions to produce tangible results.
I had the unique opportunity to visit the Egyptian Embassy, where I learned about diplomatic relations between Egypt and the United States.
The embassy serves as a hub for collaboration with partner countries and international organizations, which facilitates the creation of solutions to address global issues, such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change.
Egyptian diplomats and officials work closely with local communities to identify needs and design programs that empower individuals and enhance overall societal well-being. This community-centered problem-solving is something my team and I aspired towards while crafting our business proposal.
I also visited the Embassy of Chad to learn about the role that CHad plays in domestic and international development work. We discussed critical topics including investments, international trade, and human rights.
While touring the embassy, I learned about the wide range of policy issues and gained a better understanding of the embassy’s role in international development through sustainable and inclusive initiatives.
My visit to the Embassy of Chad was not only educational, but inspiring. It allowed me to see Chad’s pivotal role in advancing international development and how I can implement their ideals into my own work.
Our team met with leading experts in the fields of business and economic development from Johns Hopkins University, the State Department, and GlobalGiving.
One such expert was Carla Brooks, Business and Development Officer at Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Program. She provided us with a crash course in advertising and marketing, in which we learned essential components of an effective marketing campaign.
Our work with Ms. Brooks was essential in preparing us for our culminating pitch deck presentation. With her and other expert guidance, we streamlined our initial ideas to further our efforts in launching the venture our business partner envisioned.
By the end of the week, we had incorporated the advice of leading experts from across the globe for our business proposal to empower and transform the life of our business partner.