Episode 04: A Social Entrepreneur’s Vision - Forget Shareka
Inside the Episode with Forget Shareka, Co-Founder of Chashi Foods and Founder of Life Hope Future Association:
How can organizations avoid the pitfalls of extractive development work and instead build organizations that identify challenges first - then build tailored solutions second.
What is a ‘Multiplier Effect,’ and how can social entrepreneurs leverage this for greater impact?
How can we embody the concept of ‘Shared Prosperity’ for ourselves, our families, and our communities?
Encouraged Reading:
Introduction:
I first heard Forget Shareka speak on the COP26 Panel discussion, ‘African Women’s Grassroots Climate Action.’ Years younger than her contemporaries on stage, I was incredibly impressed by her poise, wisdom and vision for the future. I came away inspired by her work as a social entrepreneur and I hope you will be too.
Challenges:
All too often, we heard at COP about the consistent failures of ‘development work’ … AKA oftentimes Global North organizations ‘swooping in’ and attempting to make impact but not doing it in the right ways, leading to further harm for the local communities that organizations were hoping to help. One short and simple story stuck with me.
A Global North - based organization received funding for a limited time project (5 years) to help a community in Uganda grow more farm crops. They introduced a new seed into the farming community, one that would yield crops at a much faster rate. This succeeded over the first harvesting season. However, the farmers soon realized a few things:
The newly introduced seed did not coexist with the local soil and climate. Once crops were harvested, their seeds did not effectively regrow into new generations - something that their local seed did very well.
The new seed was much more expensive and they would have to purchase it from outside the community. Additionally, they would need to purchase a new set of seeds each year because it did not regenerate effectively.
The Global North - based organization would not continue the development project after the allotted 5 years were done and funding evaporated.
The result was a community, who had been farming with a specific and successful seed for countless generations, now had a new reliance on a foreign seed that did not adapt well to their climate and soil. They were locked into a very expensive contract that seemed attractive initially on paper but was ill-designed and extractive from the start.
I was interested to learn from Forget what, in her mind, constituted justice when working with a local community and how we can approach partnership differently than the all-to-frequent cautionary tale above…
Signs of Hope:
Forget Shareka + Chashi Foods
Forget grew up in a rural community in northern Zimbabwe, raised by her grandmother who was a subsistence farmer. She describes her home community as ‘marginalized’ but she “doesn’t regret growing up in that type of environment, because that environment absolutely shaped who [she is] today”. As she said, everything happens for a purpose, and her purpose is to learn from her experiences and have a positive impact in development work.
Inspired by her grandmother and equipped with her education, she decided to focus her energy supporting farmers in her community. As she explained, “Agriculture is life, it is everything… so why can’t I help the farmers and my community around me?”
After spending time with farmers, and even constructing a small farmers’ working group, she quickly identified a key challenge: lack of robust cold storage facilities leads to shorter shelf lives for fruits & veges and lots of post-harvest food waste. Drying technologies seemed to be one potential solution. So, as the leader of Product Development she worked with farmers and in a lab for a year experimenting with different fruit drying techniques.
Forget also knew she wanted to build a completely ‘green business’ and for her that meant ‘no waste’. So the model quickly evolved…
Chashi Foods will buy produce directly from farmers then process that into dried fruits.
The residues are either turned into other products (for example, residual spices can also be sold), or made into compost.
This compost is donated to the community, neighbors or farmers to eliminate waste.
Today, they sell dried pineapples, bananas, mangos, apples, and more - see more details HERE
Additionally, they offer drying services for other farmers who want to leverage their technology and also offer farmer training (like the farmers’ working group) who they help with ‘post harvest management and agribusiness.’ Forget was able to share a few amazing stories as examples during our interview together, like supporting a local farmer grow and sell her own dried tomatoes to a local hotel before even Chashi was able to do so!
Chashi Foods is doing things the ‘right’ way and being recognized for their leadership. They are a majority-women team, received a ‘Green Business Award,’ share their knowledge with the community around them, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here… I’m sure with Forget involved, they will achieve great things.
CAMFED
In our conversation together, Forget referenced a statistic from UNICEF - only 14% of children reach secondary school in Zimbabwe and 8% reach Upper Secondary School. This is an even greater challenge for children like Forget who grew up in rural communities where sometimes just the distance from home to school can make it impossible to continue education. In primary school, she walked 12 kilometers to and from school every day. Compared to my 12 city block walk to school, just over 1 kilometer, this really puts things into perspective.
One incredible group that stepped up to help Forget is CAMFED. Since 1992, they have supported over 4.8 million children go to school in Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Forget told me that along with school fees being a barrier to education, there are oftentimes many additional factors beyond cost like stationary, uniforms, and sanitary pads. CAMFED helps financially support students who need it but also makes an extra effort to offer non-financial support as well. For example, when Forget’s brother had a stroke, they made sure to track her down and provide support so that she could return to school.
They also are building the CAMFED Association, which is a network of women leaders educated with CAMFED support who are now pushing for change in their communities … this group helped Forget with university applications, and actually provided her with an email address to use when submitting those applications before she had one herself! They also offer zero interest loans and support to any child who wants to start a business to support their family and community, offering an important alternative to banks or other finance institutions who would ask for significant collateral.
Amongst these incredible gifts, according to Forget, one of the greatest lessons from CAMFED came from their mentality around a ‘Multiplier Effect.’ Every girl who graduates and joins this Association agrees to financially support the schooling of at least three others and extend that support into multiple types of mentorship and ‘sisterhood’. Over time, this network expands and multiplies… this is how Forget hopes to run Chashi Foods, with impact multiplying out across communities and across generations after we are all gone from this world.
Takeaways:
Here are some lessons that I’ve learned from Forget since we first met:
“Understanding leads to tailored solutions, extrapolation leads to failed impact.”
Successful projects immediately involve the local community to understand what the real challenges are, what help is needed or not needed, and then leveraging the existing knowledge of the community as a partner to implement a solution.
It is important for entrepreneurs, non-profits and individuals to learn about the challenge first hand rather than assuming you understand by reading about it online.
It is important not to ‘produce’ anything until you know what the challenge is.
‘I am because you are’… we all depend on each other.
Action is at the heart of compassion.
Offer to help with no strings attached.
“Do not make yourself an island, learn to collaborate”
When impacting climate change, always measure, capture, benchmark, and report.
Seek “shared prosperity” rather than individual gain.
Engage:
CAMFED - turning the tide on poverty for girls (and now boys + CAMA) - association network
Life Hope Future Association: Forget co-founded this initiative in 2017, helping indigenous population transition from hunting and gathering to agri-business and garden projects … they also support programs to help farmers and children to get education.
Beam - gov program to help children and orphans get education
EARTH University - Costa Rica University
Net Impact - US-Based organization, she applied for a food program
