Been long since my last posts. Last night while in the dark (#KenyaPower), i went on twitter and started reading tweets on my timeline. There was a tweet about taking girls to school: Ksh 100,000 can pay for secondary school education for a girl in North Eastern Province. That amazed me. The initiative with twitter handle @100gals100days wants to raise funds in 100 days enough to take 100 girls in North Eastern Province to Secondary School. Now that’s a cool thing to do on twitter, Social media for Social responsibility.
I then remembered a chat I had with my friend Denis(@deniskarema) who runs a feeding program for a primary school in Ruiru, near Nairobi. He says that you do not need to do everything for the poor. Just do one thing. It will have a big impact. He and other young guys run an initiative called #foodForEducation. They take some kids from Ruiru primary School and give them lunch. Just lunch. It costs Ksh 200 to feed a child for a week. The project impacts on the education of the children involved. It is currently feeding 30 children who would have otherwise gone hungry all day. It is amazing if you think about it. A child cannot concentrate in class on an empty stomach. Feed the child and he or she is able to learn and participate more in class.
There are many more young Kenyans who are taking on the challenges of society themselves. You only need to see a problem around you and do something little. If all of us did something small, the impact would be amazing.
Do something today. Whether it is donating 200 to feed a child for a week or volunteering to tutor your poor neighbour’s kid, the little you do will change someone’s life as well as yours.
I saw this very interesting video on youtube by Anonymous( A hacking group), and just had to share.
Even more interesting however is the act of hacking. Especially after a Malaysian cyber security student decided to practice what he learnt on the Government of Kenya taking down 103 sites.
I was recently reading an article on the financial times and found this interesting concept by the UK to grant Entrepreneurs visas to start and run any kind of business. Find the details here.
I thought how interesting this was and how it would apply to Kenya. For Kenya to achieve the vision 2030, we’ll need to attract a lot of investment and talent from within and outside the country.
There’s dire need for the government to come up with innovative ways of attracting foreign finance to fund local innovative start-ups. Also we need to encourage more young people to start business in whatever scale to improve innovation. The education system needs a twitch towards more tangible accomplishment than papers.
In other news, more than 60% of youth enterprise development fund is still untouched according to Dr Paul Otuoma, Minister Youth Affairs. We need to go for this money people.
Check out the procedure here.
If you are a Kenyan business and you want to grow, you better get an online presence; and fast.
You can now do this free of charge and without spending all your day on it.
Step 1: Get to a cyber cafe. If you have your own computer, get an internet connection.
Step 2: Fire up the browser.
Step 3: Open a gmail account. If you have one already, skip this step.
Step 4: Go to kbo.co.ke. and click Get started.
Step 5: Follow the prompts on the site and design your site as you want it.
Step 6: Click public at the top of the prompt to make your site visible to the public.
Your business is now online. There are benefits with using kbo.co.ke to host your site. The one I like most is the sms function. You actually get an sms every time someone contacts you through your website. Its more immediate and you don’t have to check your email all the time. And because the client has to leave their contact, you can contact them at once.
A few tips:
1. Be truthful. Whatever you say you sell online, better be what you sell. Otherwise people won’t trust your business.
2. Customers come first. Think about what your customers are interested in knowing about your business. Help them connect with you through your website.
3. Be proactive. Update your website more frequently and always reply to the customer’s queries.
Check out more tips and tools here.
Now that you are online, sell more and get word out about your site. Think social.
Just checked for deals on the net and was surprised at how vibrant it has become.
First came Zetu and Rupu now we have unado and mocality started offering deals.
There’s also a new deals aggregater; Zambu. Zambu integrates all deals and provides you with one platform where you can select suitable deals for you instead of hopping from site to site looking for deals. So for those of you always on the look out for deals, Zambu is for you.
githinjimuchiri
