Nairuba Rhoda is an 18-year-old female from Nakamiro Village in Bwaise II Parish, Kawempe Division. Raised by a single mother, and without contact from her father, she dropped out of school in Senior 3 in 2019 due to lack of school fees. It was then that she decided to start her chicken rearing business to support her mother and her three siblings. She built her chicken coop on top of their house due to a lack of space elsewhere.
Nairuba says that business was doing well prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but following the outbreak it experienced a number of setbacks. “With the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, many of the chickens died due to a lack of chicken feed, as it became very expensive to transport the feed. It also became difficult to reach out to my customers as movement was restricted. This greatly affected my business,” she recalls.
“When I heard of the AFFCAD Entrepreneurship Scheme, I immediately registered for it. I wanted to gain knowledge that would help boost my business, as I had started the business without any training on entrepreneurship,” Nairuba says. She explains that the training enabled her to acquire knowledge about record keeping, whereas prior to the training she kept no records of her business. She also gained a better understanding of customer care and differentiating family and business. “Before the training, I used to be rude to my customers, but the training made me realise that I need to be polite to my customers in order to retain them, and even get more customers for my business,” she explains. She is still using the knowledge she gained to better her business, and she hopes to expand it in future now that she is more conscious of her customer care and has increased her business’ popularity.
Nairuba thanks AFFCAD and its partners for the opportunity to gain entrepreneurship and employability skills that have enabled her to run her business in a better way amidst numerous challenges.
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