Uplifting people out of poverty by sharing your management experience

Small farmers and producers from developing countries face major challenges commercializing their products to gain volume and charge fair prices.

Yesterday we hosted two friends, Inbal and Pierre, in their way back to Uganda. Among others, they are involved on supporting local farmers bringing their products with a higher competitive edge to wider markets.

The experiences they shared made me realized that there is something many of us -young professionals- can do to support these communities.

Of course most of it should be done onsite after gaining awareness of the local reality but It could really enable them to reach more stable and fair income from their work and investments.

My first thoughts range from uplifting the purchasing and selling power by enabling the formation of "cooperativas" to more simple actions like educating them to negotiate shelf space in local super markets.

As usual, what excited me the most is what they could do with an intelligent mobile phone and some good preparation to spot opportunities and trade resources with less effort. It also called my attention that in the last 90 days, one of the key search trends in Uganda has been "Orange Uganda", refering to the mobile comm provider - http://www.orange.ug/. In their Home Page they offer as new exciting key service: "internet everywhere" :).

It is always great hosting friends that challenge the way I live and the way I believe I can contribute.