OVER 100 Entrepreneurs from Bulawayo benefited from the Sustainable and Resilient Enterprises (SURE) Training which was organized by the International Labor Organization(ILO) in partnership with Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association(BVTA), Bulawayo City Council(BCC), Dial Honour, Hand in Hand, Junior Achievement Zimbabwe, Chamber of SMEs and VIRL Microfinance.
The training which kicked off on the 2nd of October and ended yesterday was held in different venues in the city.The first groups did their training at Small City Hall then the second groups held theirs at Hotel St Patrick's.
The trainings were officially opened by his worship the Mayor of the City of Bulawayo, David Coltart and Mr Maradzana from Chamber of SMEs.
The SURE training programme seeks to empower leaders and businesses to face and manage any kinds of threat, hazard, crisis, or disaster.The programme defines business resilience as the ability of a business to anticipate and respond to crisis, not only to survive and recover but also to evolve.
Speaking on the sidelines of the training, one of the Programme trainers, who is also the Project Officer at Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association (BVTA), Bakani Ncube said:
"Sustainable resiliency is key for small and medium sized enterprises.The SURE training programme empowers businesses to survive and thrive in the face of unexpected adversities such as pandemics, cyberattacks, natural disasters, economic upheavals, and social disruptions".
"The challenge in today’s globalized world, businesses face a vast array of threats to their operations.The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined, as never before, that businesses need to be prepared to face unexpected events. In short, they need to be resilient and sustainable.SURE programme consists of six core modules teaching business leaders nine resilience practices that can be customized for their needs.According to ILO, Zimbabwe is the third country in the World to do this training since it started".
"The entrepreneurs were also taught Continuous improvement, that their Business should continue to improve or to learn or adapt to new innovations that may come.We also touched the importance of digitalization, during the Covid-19 lockdown most Businesses were greatly affected but those who were digitalizing were not affected that much as they continued selling their products online," said Ncube
Some of the trainees who spoke to BANO NEWS said:
"We've had a wonderful training from SURE.The training was amazing in that it was equipping us skills that are needed for sustainable and resilient business enterprises.We looked at a variety of items that we were being taught and how we can look at our various Business functions, especially the critical ones, the ones that sustain the company in terms of turnover, in terms of sales and all that.I would say it was very important, I learnt a lot and I think testimony to that is I have been talking to my colleagues as well, they learnt a lot," said Witness Mzizi, founder and Director of Novella Trading an entity that deals with ingredients and food packaging.
"The training empowered me and the company in a broader way because we learnt of things e.g Risk Strategies, on how we can prepare ourselves for different before they happen," said Thubelihle Nyathi, founder and Director of Eden Fresco an Agri-business entity.
Another trainee, Chantel Chirawa told BANO NEWS that:
"What I learnt for the past 5 days is that we need to be able to prepare for any crisis that we may come across as Business people, whether formal or informal.We also learnt on how to train your staff, why we should train our staff and how to diversify.I real benefited a lot and I will be implementing everything I was taught at the SURE training"
