Ending the APEFE * AFEM coaching mission in Morocco

I have arrived at the end of my mission and I traveled from Tangier to Casablanca to El Jadida back to Casablanca to Rabat back to Casabalanca and now I will go and relax 3 days in Marrakech. Due to the distances it was quite a challenging project but I enjoyed it so much.

I learned a lot about Moroccan culture and most of all the struggle of Moroccan women in their society that is slowly leaning to be more women friendly. As a wrote before project such as AFEM supported by the King of Morocco are ideal. Many foreign development agencies are keeping themselves busy with coming to aid to the development of Moroccan business leaders.

My task was to provide 2 coaching sessions in each city. In Antwerp I prepared a Business Model Canvas presentation in order to easily develop a business plan. This is a good tool for revising maybe your strategy in the existing company and for the starters to develop their business plans. Also Moroccan female aspiring business leaders can request to be in the program Min Ajliki. This is an incubator in which the women whom passed the selection committee receive 18 months of free coaching and office space.

The second coaching session I prepared was marketing and social media marketing. My favourite ! The female business leaders seem to be also most interested in marketing and social media.

All the women were very highly educated which is opposite of our customers at microStart. No one was less than master qualified. The majority of them were industrial engineers. A few had given up and started their business to avoid the corporate struggle with men. Working twice as hard to be respected on for half of the work.

Find below some of the activities planning to be launched or already started: (The names are probably misspelled.)

Karima: Personal Development Coach
Hama: Artisinal custom made carpets
Hadjida: 3 star hotel in El Jadida
Fatima: event marketing company
Saida: language centre
Ream: safe toy company for kids
Wafa: daycare
Jalal: Communication PR
Haicha: interior design
Gena: pret a porter
Karima: Ecological products
Fatima: corporate consulting
Zena: coaching computers
Naima: painter
Jihenna: pret a porter
Marianne: pret a parter
Khadija: steel company
The other names I really couldn’t understand but there is still a glass company, HR consulting bureau and an online archiving company. Definitely worth the projects !

Giving these trainings in French, being flexible at all times, staying relax and entertaining women from another culture is another skill I can add to my CV. Working with Chahine Majoub from APEFE was a dream! Nothing was left to coincidence only well organised meetings.

Francine Carron January 13, 2016

Day 1: The art of entrepreneurship

At 9 AM the coaching session was planned to start. Chahine Majoub from APEFE, already told me yesterday that the participants will arrive late. So most people arrived by 09:45 to 10:30. I was quite nervous for this day as I had been preparing the training materials for days last week in Antwerp. I wanted to present a training session that covered how to develop your business plan in a very basic way including all aspects of entrepreneurship. The easiest universal tool is business model canvas by Osterwalder. I pulled information from everywhere including what we already produced at microStart and developed a full training including what to do if your business is declining.

I was nervous as it is difficult to entertain people for eight hours long. On top of that the trainings are in French. I speak the language fluently but I do have a Flemish/English accent which I am conscious about. Inshallah (adapting to the situation) my coaching went well and the participants thought I had a Canadian accent.

The participants were very interesting and young. Many of them in their early twenties and all master students. 1 wanted to start a window company, 1 a contemporary pret a porter line, 1 a marketing company for events, 1 a public construction company, 1 a digital archiving company… They all had very diverse ideas and definitely potential. At the end of the seminar they all had to pitch their businessplan to each other. I am very honoured that I have the opportunity to coach them! & Inshallah again hopefully they liked it. Actually I hope my coaching was on point as my outfit today.