Trosley Kaizemi – Namibia

Hope’s beauty shop is a source of livelihood

“I am rendering my services to all the women of this community”

Ms Trosley is a married woman and a mother of two children and she has completed her grade 12. She runs a service business in Outjo Kunene region. She provides services such as cutting, braiding and dying hair and providing advice to customers as to how they should treat their hair. She also sells ice and dry chips as a backup. She started this type of business while she was still at school and continued with the same idea after completing her secondary education. She decided to continue with this business due to the fact that she was unemployed and had children to support and pay for their school fees. She likes her business very much as it is profitable and the community women are very supportive.

Kaizemi thinks that her potential customers are waitresses, teachers, students, nurses and self-employed people. She understands the local business environment since she was born in Outjo and her ambition is to create more branches in other towns so her business grows. She feels that her market strategies have worked well because her business is well known by the community. She says she is in touch with all her customers through cell phone messages and informs them about the availability of services.

Ms Trosley says that with the little income from her business her life has changed very much because she can afford to buy whatever she wants to buy and pay for water and electricity.

Kaizemi is grateful for having the chance to attend Gender Links’ (GL) entrepreneurship workshops because she learnt how to manage the business and how to prepare a business plan. She provides her services on cash and carry principles to avoid loss because she managed to open an account with the bank in order to save some of her profit money rather than to squander it.

The training came at the right time for Kaizemi while she was struggling with her business and she really appreciated it because she is now capable of working out her own budget and conducting market research for her services and products. She is bit worried about failing to secure a bigger place from where she can operate because she is currently operating from home and she cannot accommodate more customers in the limited space.

Kaizemi runs her business alone because the business is still small without much income but she intends to borrow money from the bank to grow her business and give employment to more people. She was born and grew up in Outjo and she knows many people who can link her to resources.

She intends to register her business with the ministry of finance, ministry of trade and industry and social security commission since this will help her to access finance and participate in business forums. She understands that potential customers will be found on different platforms and if she joins forums she believes that her communication skills will improve.

Kaizemi affirms that she is now good at managing her business and knows how to keep records of her daily sales and stock. She says the training was relevant and her expectations were all met. She is thankful that she was transformed by GL through free training. She says she is a mentor for the new business owners in her location and she wants to introduce the same training that she went through.

According to her, experiencing and surviving violence means that she feels as though she now has full responsibility for herself and for the care of her family. She says that the GL training she attended has been a life changing programme.

Trosley Kaizemi is a driver of change in the sense that she has survived gender based violence and become an entrepreneur. She sets an example for other women in her community to follow and makes sure her legacy lives on. She is a committed member of the women’s support group in Outjo, a group which raises awareness about gender based violence targeted at women and children.