From Workshops to Markets: A Proposed Multimedia Project

I would like to pitch a multimedia project that would achieve community-building and provide a social service focused on empowering women-entrepreneurs through business opportunities, within a developing country context.

Vision. As its vision statement, the website will be a forum to help women-entrepreneurs from rural areas in finding buyers for their products, thereby giving them employment and increasing their incomes.

Platform. This forum will be a link (like Politico 44) within an already-existing website, thus avoiding the large establishment and start-up costs of starting a brand new one. Thus, a key assumption is that the women-entrepreneurs have access to small loans and have already started their businesses. Consequently, the parent website will probably be one that is involved in microfinance.

Customer requirement. The main feature requirement is that—though this website—women-entrepreneurs should be able to obtain up-to-date information on which retail outlet stores in urban cities require deliveries of three product categories that they produce, namely, clothing, footwear and bags (specifically ladies’ handbags and grocery shopping bags). Perishable foodstuffs are excluded. Urban buyers and rural sellers are both target clients for the website.

Measurement. All the components above should be quantifiable: market information should not be more than one week old. It should include when the deliveries will be required, how much, and what the going prices are in various other areas for comparative purposes. Women-entrepreneurs should own profitable, family-sized businesses located in rural areas. The products they want to sell should meet minimum quality standards and be photographed for posting on the website. Other qualifications will be required, such as compliance with national laws and regulations, etc.

Teams. A requirements team (including a strong research sub-team) and a design team will be needed, since interactivity and speed of information access will be very important to make this site a dynamic forum. Buyers and sellers should be able to “converse” through the website, compare market data, and bid. A technical team will also be needed, but the focus is not so much the web platform itself (since an existing site will be used), but rather the complements to the Internet that will need to be harnessed. In many developing countries, this will be cell phones for text messaging as well as short video clips (especially personal testimonies of business success). There should also be a campaign of lectures to prospective clients at Internet Cafes in rural areas, where television sets should be set up for showing longer instructional videos.

Schedule. The research sub-team will need to do its work first. Do the markets exist? Will there be a demand for market information from women-entrepreneurs? Are there barriers and how significant are they? The findings of the research sub-team will feed into the preparation of a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD), which is a must. About 50% of the project period will be for fleshing out feature requirements and meeting customer satisfaction alone. Design and technical aspects will share 25% and testing/tweaking will comprise 25% of the project period. This project should be deliverable within 6 months.

I would pitch this multimedia project idea to private philanthropic foundations, bilateral aid organizations (like USAID or the Peace Corps), and numerous international organizations providing microfinance.