SCOLA PONERA

Scola Kevin Ponera is the Founder of Hecasa Homestay and Safaris LTD Company, she possesses a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA), MSc. Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Agriculture (MNRSA) and BSc. Wildlife Management (WL). A motivated, adaptable and responsible person with Business Administration, Agriculture and Natural Resource Management professional and technical skills acquired through education and past work experiences.

“Good Things Do Not Come Easily”

Q: Tell us a few things about you! Your background, your childhood and early beginnings! 

My name is Scola Kevin Ponera, I was born on 24th June 1985 in Ruvuma South Region of Tanzania. I possess a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from the Institute of Accountancy Arusha-(IAA), Master’s in Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Agriculture (MNRSA) and Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Management (WL) from Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA).

I worked with the government of Tanzania as the District Wildlife Officer with the Ministry of Natural Resource and Tourism for 3 years up to 2010, then after completion of my Masters in Natural Resources for Sustainable Agriculture, I worked as a Programme Officer Agriculture Advisor with the Helen Keller International on the Homestead Garden Project around regions of Lake Victoria promoting the consumption of vegetables. I later worked with Oikos East Africa on a similar project on creating awareness of horticulture-based crops and nutrition and later joined the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture where I am still working as Programme Administrator. I have been working on a project which involves women for over 14 years now, where I have seen and experienced their struggles so I have been moved by the need to help the women. I am a Founder of Hecasa Homestay and Safaris LTD Company, and the “IWOSEA Hub” project idea for IMPROVING WOMEN SMALL ENTERPRISES IN ARUSHA, Region, TANZANIA–EAST AFRICA.

Q: What are some of the key challenges in your society currently?

Women in Tanzania suffer a generalised discrimination and lack of representation. Women’s unemployment rate is higher than men’s and women are generally paid half than their male counterparts.

For instance, the Arusha Municipality, where I am currently living, covers 270km2 and with approximately half a million people. Here most of the women are excluded from ownership, formal economies, structured income-generating activities and leadership. In addition to their multiple roles in the families, their economic engagement is mainly limited to informal activities such as petty sale of second-hand clothes or resale of vegetables. Both activities are carried out in the streets that surround the household, but many factors hinder the survival of such micro-enterprises and limit women's entrepreneurial engagement:

i) Women are the most affected by socio-economic barriers in particular due to their lack of know-how and know-why which is essential to fit in the subsistence marketplace;

ii) Women have low capacity to identify, create and run small-scale businesses, together with non-existent information channels and managerial support, and

iii) Marginalised women have very low representation (women with disabilities, widows or caretakers of disabled).

In urban Tanzania, disabled women account for 7% of the female population above 7 years, 42% of these women have no education and 57% generate their income entirely from farming. On the other hand, less than 40% of disabled children between 7 and 13 attend school and their caretakers have a workload incompatible with most traditional businesses.

Q: Share with us some of the hurdles that you had to overcome in your life so far? How did you handle them? 

Growing up, I was the firstborn of seven children my parents had. Living in a village where my father was a primary school teacher and my mother stayed at home, it was a bit challenging in terms of accessing health facilities, education and an overall economic challenge. I recall when I was 8-9 years old, I was sick from Malaria which was very bad at the time and since we were in interior village where there was no hospital I had to be treated by a local nurse, who administered medicine through injection which caused two problems.  First, I was overdosed which caused me to be in ICU and secondly, I was not able to walk for a period of one year.  Unfortunately, it was the time for me to start my standard one of Primary school, since my mother had to carry me to school and take care of me and my siblings at the same time. It was a lot of hard work for her.  Thank God I recovered and was able to walk again which was not the case for all children during that period as these injections caused permanent disabilities to many children back then).

So when I remember the struggles my mother had to undergo taking care of me, while also struggling with small business to meet the needs for only that one year I could not imagine her doing that for the rest of the years if I was completely disabled. Luckily I was completely healed and finished my education and now planning to help the women who take care of disabled children through my start-up project idea of IWOSEA (Improving Women Small Enterprises ) but my main focus is women who take care of disabled children.

Q: Why is the role of a mentor important for you? 

Mentorship is very important to me because being a woman who came from not a privileged background, I lack some confidence but mentorship has helped me to raise my confidence which I really needed.  Now I believe in myself that I can implement my project idea. Mentorship will improve my leadership skills and develop my problem-solving skills which I will use not only in my company but also in my start-up, so having a mentor is very important to me.

Q: Do you have a lesson that life has taught you and you would like to share? 

I have learned that good things do not come easily and that no situation is permanent in life. The life I live now, 30 years back, you would not have imagined, as we were struggling economically with one or no meals a day sometimes, besides the fact that my father had a teacher’s salary, it was very little compared to the responsibilities that he had, so we were supposed to do additional work on people’s farms. I had to work a lot while also studying for all my primary and secondary school education to take care of studies' costs. Even when I got a government grant for my first degree, I had to minimise my expenses to help my parents pay for my young brothers’ and sisters’ tuition fees. All of this motivated me to stay focused, study hard and manage to complete the education that I have and live a life where I can also start thinking of helping others.

Q: Name a project, a foundation or a person in your country that you think is doing great work in helping improve other people's lives! 

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) where I am working I think it is doing great things in terms of conducting research in the agriculture sector and they are doing various projects to improve the lives of people through research.

The Word Vision is also doing a good job. They are dealing with children to improve their life and well-being.

Q: What are some of the challenges that women in your country face and what efforts are being made towards gender equality?

In Tanzania, there are no formalised national programmes to favour women’s economic empowerment and the large majority of women rely purely on informal strategies. Existing strategies to assist the economic empowerment of women include the facilitation and the promotion of social funds and community banks where women can obtain micro-loans; these have become a popular means of development. Unfortunately, these funds have extremely high repayment rates, reaching commonly 40% interest/year, forcing women to borrow from different sources in order to repay previous loans. Vocational courses are also available, at a cost, and the Chamber of Commerce facilitates skills development among the business owners registered officially.

Other informal strategies are the formation of women groups, usually among neighbours, which provide exit strategies in case of family emergencies (unexpected medical bills, accidents, deaths, thefts). 

Women-owned businesses account for over one-third of all businesses in Africa, making women major players in the private sector, but their entrepreneurship is generally informal and not growing to its potential, particularly in agriculture. Moreover, legal and institutional barriers exist that affect men’s and women’s enterprises differently.

Women entrepreneurs are often prevented from running competitive businesses by their low education and skill levels, which limits their access to support services. Most women tend to copy each other rather than to produce something new for their market or to exploit their indigenous knowledge which is often underestimated in its potential. Economic decisions are normally taken by the male head of the household.

Women face many other problems such as limited access to necessary technologies due to lack of information and know-how, and high prices; difficulty in finding appropriate production sites at competitive prices; inadequate skills in the fields of production, business management and marketing; lack of skills for product diversification; limited access to finance; limited access to information; lack of organisation and networking, both among women themselves, and between women and existing business associations and support institutions.

Indigenous Knowledge has not received the needed attention in developing countries in general, and in Africa in particular, despite providing the basis for problem-solving strategies for local people.

Also, many aid programmes do not account for the already existing workload of women in families, and tend to exclude the weakest individuals who are the most in need of economic empowerment. Selection of beneficiaries is often the main bottleneck during the implementation of support programmes, the stronger representatives of the society tend to be more vocal and benefit more even though they are the least in need. Caretaking services for smaller children also help greatly the success of programs involving single mothers but tend to be overlooked.

A gap in the aid sector includes Tanzania's food culture, which has hardly benefited from any specific public policy or private interest. Locally owned catering services in Tanzania often suffer scarce hygiene standards and quality and rarely meet the requirements of the tourism sector and the lack of an organised branding of quality makes the potential consumers sceptical and reluctant. Traditional restaurants offering safe, diverse and ecologically sound traditional menus are non-existent and this is a big gap in the opportunities for economic development.

Q: Share with us a motto you live by. 

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.

Q: If you had all the money needed to launch the project of your dreams, can you describe what you would do? 

I would launch the IWOSEA Hub” project idea for IMPROVING WOMEN SMALL ENTERPRISES IN ARUSHA, Region, TANZANIA – EAST AFRICA.          My idea is centred on creating prospering economies for various vulnerable groups of women such as widows, the disabled, women who take care of disabled children and young school girls in both primary and secondary schools from across Arusha and the neighbouring areas. The name of this project idea is IWOSEA, an abbreviation for “Improving Women’s Small Enterprises in Arusha”, which will incorporate a hub to be recognized as a women-led centre, able to promote and catalyse economic and social opportunities for women in the city of Arusha as a start and later use this design to open other women hub in other regions of Tanzania.

In this context, I see sustainable utilisation of natural resources and indigenous knowledge as instruments to generate employment and economic empowerment for women in urban areas across Arusha and the neighbouring regions. 

The project will improve the livelihoods of Arusha and Tanzania women by investing in capacity building of marginalised women entrepreneurs, developing entrepreneurial marketing channels in the horticulture sector, boosting indigenous knowledge and creation of sustainable employment opportunities for vulnerable women groups. My goal would be to use this region as a pilot and expand this idea to other part of Tanzania while adopting their economic activities in those regions so as to reach a wide range of women. 

As I believe that empowering people is a powerful tool for transformation hence I would invest in providing various training to women to unlock their full potential through income-generating activities, entrepreneurship training and access to micro-financing options.

Q: Anything else that you may wish to add?

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the GTF Programme for connecting me with my mentor who has enriched me with various expertise advise, I am genuinely grateful for all the wisdom and advice she has shared with me so far and thanks to GTF for guiding me through an incredible entrepreneurship journey!