W-Holistic Business Solutions, founder of Sustainable Education and Enterprise Development (SEED), organised the Pilot Business Development Support Project for Affordable Private Schools in Lagos State during the 2016/2017 Academic Session. The Pilot BDS, which is an integrated training, mentoring, business development and access to finance solution for revolutionising the emergence, growth, success and sustainability of Education MSMEs (i.e. affordable private schools: pre-school, primary, secondary and vocational schools), had a model adopted and tailored towards helping Affordable Private Schools improve their capacity to become profitable and sustainable businesses, and also, well equipped to cater for low-income families adequately.

The Pilot BDS Project was targeted at Affordable Private Schools in two (2) selected Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Lagos State, Ikeja Local Government Area and Ojo Local Government Areas. The Pilot BDS Project provided fifty-one (51) Affordable Private Schools with education-focused business development support, following registration and verification of interested Affordable Private Schools, and conduct of Baseline Survey on their schools. The interested Affordable Private Schools were selected from the pool of schools from one of our SEED Acquisition Partners, Association for Formidable Educational Development (AFED), based on our SEED Selection Criteria.

“James Adeyemi, Jim Adex Children School” “We are happy to have this training within the period it has taken place. It has really been an eye-opener because there are some things we thought we knew that we now know more about. Like the area of how to run our schools better than we have been running it, how to source for loans, how to get more profit by handling our schools properly. Apart from that, it has also given us a belief in ourselves that we can achieve more and be like the great schools that have been on.”

“Amu Olanrewaju, Oxlam Nursery and Primary School” “Personally, I have put a lot of things in place to make sure that these help me through the next phase of my school. To be sincere, I have actually put a lot of plans in place based on working on the School [Transformation] Plan. It has really helped us to understand the proper manner of writing a school plan to be able to access funds and other benefits attached to a school.” 

 

SEED Successfully Completes Pilot BDS!

The Pilot BDS Project was supported with a Technical Assistance Grant by Developing Effective Private Education Nigeria (DEEPEN), a UKaid funded project implemented by Cambridge Education, a member of the Mott MacDonald Group. The first set of trainings for the fifty-one (51) Affordable Private Schools was held in March 2017 and May 2017 for Ojo Local Government Area and Ikeja Local Government Area respectively, covering the first two modules of the SEED Curriculum, while the second set of training for the schools was held in March 2017 and June 2017 for Ojo Local Government Area and Ikeja Local Government Area respectively, and covered the third and fourth modules of the SEED Curriculum. The final set of trainings for the schools was held in July 2017 and September 2017 Ojo Local Government Area and Ikeja Local Government Area respectively with the schools completing the SEED Curriculum with business training from the fifth and sixth modules of the SEED Curriculum.

Participating Affordable Private Schools during the training sessions were trained on how to complete their School Transformation Plans (STPs), structured plans which set out schools’ vision for the future and how they intend to tackle their weaknesses in order to bring about improvement where they are most needed in their schools, which served as the deliverables for the 6-Module Business Development Support Training. Thereafter, Post-Training Continuing Support Sessions were initiated for interested participating schools to leverage on the SEED Partnership with Jessefield Microfinance Bank for the Access to Finance business aspect of the project, and also, for monitoring and advisory support provision. The SEED Continuing Support Sessions were held in the second-half of 2017.

Click on the links to read about the Success Stories from the SEED Pilot BDS Project: All Round Positive Nursery & Primary School, Vera International School.