Swaziland: Green Shield

Green Shield is a business that has invented a new range of skin care petroleum jelly by making it using organic perfumes to make mosquito repellent and non-mosquito repellent products that have numerous medicinal benefit like being anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic. These are perfumed products that are good for people with Sinus’s, Asthma and can be used as a home remedy for Eczema Patients. Other products on offer in this business are organic oils that can be used as roll on doubling up to a body spray in one use. The entire product is moving away from the usage of synthetic products to make the world a green environment also provided good service to people with allergic reactions to chemical based perfumes. We have noted to escalating growth of deadly Malaria in Africa.

This is a profit oriented social enterprise that not only sells products to grow but has a specific aim to grow and develop other young people in the community through Skills transfer and creating businesses for them through the distribution of GreenShield products in their surrounding communities. To train people to develop their ideas and turn them to viable businesses. It creates job opportunities to the local youth as the business grows since as part of our scalability planning, The aim is to have at least two distribution stations in each of the four regions of Swaziland and at least three, two being in South Africa and one in Mozambique. There is much focus on youth development and enrichment through innovative and creative thinking and transformation environmental practices in the country and globally.The main activities are:

• Recognition- finding the problem in the market and then developing a product that will fill in the gap.
• Research and development- finding the best method of making the product to be the best.
• Feasibility Study/ Market Research- conducting a research to ascertain the viability of the business.
• Production process planning- to find out where to get raw material and all other resources that will be needed to make finished product.
• Marketing strategy planning-figuring the most important aspect to be able to transfer the belief had on the product to the next person.
• Acquiring of raw materials.
• Production, packaging and branding then distribution.

All of 325 beneficiaries. Obtained 5 direct beneficiaries, 320 indirect beneficiaries (e.g. through other networks) and no online beneficiaries (e.g. website access, mailing lists, scholarly articles).Budgetary resources allocated to this project by the council $3417 with no kind contributions and the total budget for the project is $3417.Women are trained. There is the use formative evaluation to access and ascertain in the impact.  An operation and performance management strategy is set based on the team doing performance appraisals. Also a summative strategy that empowers employees to work hard and give the best on their areas of work is clearly placed.

Challenges include the accessing of finances, which delays growth and development of the business. However since business is driven the desire to fulfill a vision, financial constrain cannot stop them. Challenge of product testing, since Swaziland Standard Authority do not have laboratories to conduct the testing. To overcome the challenge they do take the products to their mother company SABS which in turn result to high costs. Also the challenge of market rejection because people are Project has benefited a tot used to other brands. However they do use their skills in persuading people to support with negotiable prices.

Nompumelelo Nhlabatsi “I really appreciate GreenShield for the trainings” Many people have benefited from the trainings, which helped them to start their own businesses. A number of women have been recruited and reached out charity based initiative focusing on OVCs including women in communities, helping them to navigate regardless their life circumstances through entrepreneurship. Also Men have been so supportive to the project. For example, a Member of Parliament from Matsanjeni agreed when appointed as an ambassador for the business. Men also buy most of their products when compared to women. Sold over 2500 units of the products to over 300 households.Trainings have played a great impact on making this project very easy together with the use of group dynamics with diverse attitudes.