Corporate overview - flipbook - page 6

At The Hope Factory, we fundamentally believe that to achieve our vision to see every South African
empowered to be nancially sustainable, we need to start with the vision of the individual. Inspiration to
succeed stems from building a healthy self-condence, encouraging our beneciaries to dream, to set
achievable goals for themselves and take ownership of their own future.
A recent external impact assessment, conducted by Greater Capital on Hope Factory beneciaries,
highlighted the needs distinction between necessity-driven and opportunity entrepreneurs. The latter refers
to entrepreneurs that are motivated by a particular business opportunity. Necessity-driven entrepreneurs,
on the other hand, engage in small entrepreneurial activities largely because they are unemployed.
According to the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2013), this tends to happen more often in
countries that have low GDP levels and high unemployment levels where people engage in entrepreneurial
activity in the absence of other choices to earn an income. As our purpose is to grow people as well as
develop businesses, we believe that empowering necessity driven entrepreneurs is just as valuable as
opportunity driven entrepreneurs. At TheHope Factory we grow all types of entrepreneurs.
We do this through our unique mentorship model, which includes development programmes for both
formal business development, as well as programmes uniquely designed for the informal sector.
We run two informal development programmes in the form of a Socio-Economic Development
programme, addressing the very real needs within the community for informal businesses, as well as a Skills
Development programme to equip individuals to go into theworkplacewithmore condence.
Included in these programmes, are various micro-franchising programmes to help willing participants start
their own business in a more systematic and fail-proof manner. These businesses are provided as a 'business
in a box' – such as our rst pilot micro-franchise called Mama Mimi's. For example the Mama Mimi's franchise
consist of wood-red oven, equipment, business training and all the tools required to set up a mini functional
bakery fromhome.
TheHope Factory will absorb some of the initial start-up cost
for themicro franchise, but the programmewill be run on a
'rent to own' basis with the small business owner paying a portion
back. This is because TheHope Factory strongly believes in giving
a ‘hand up' not a 'hand out'.
Says AnnieMcWalter, CEOof TheHope Factory: “Through
this key informal business development programme, we hope
to offer potential small business owners an already well thought
out and protable business model which they can follow and
become self-sustainable quickly.”
Informal Development
Programmes
Kholiwe Yiba and her freshly
baked Mama Mimi’s bread.
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