Lina Hamadeh

Lina is a member of the Lebanese League for Women in Business and joined the Mowgli programme in October 2011, supported by a bursary from the Body Shop Foundation. She is a graduate in Arabic Literature and Education, speaks English, French and Arabic, and is skilled in dealing with children – with extensive experience in child educational psychology.

After a career in teaching, Lina launched her business, Busy Box, with her business partner Maha Ayass in December 2008. Busy Box is a small but growing company, employing one full-time member of staff as well as the two partners, and has taken on several art students who work part- time. The company runs activity sessions aimed at developing artistic awareness and creativity.

Lina in her workshop

Things haven’t always been easy for Lina, and becoming an entrepreneur has created its fair share of challenges. She reflects on the difficulties she faces as a female entrepreneur in Lebanon. “I think it’s a little different for women here. You are not always seen as equal. But you learn from your mistakes. Some things I do in spite of the difficulties- but some things I have learnt it is best not to do.” Current events in Lebanon have also created challenges.  “It hasn’t been easy. The political and economic situation in the country is often changing, but we are doing well given the climate.”

Lina met her mentor, Imad Moghrabi, at the Mowgli training event in October 2011, and she has very fond memories. “The event was extremely interesting,” she says. “It was a fantastic opportunity to meet with lots of different people from different backgrounds and I was able to learn a lot from them. Working takes up a lot of my time and the event helped to teach me the importance of planning.” She got on well with Imad from the start. “Every time I need Imad, he’s around,” she says. “He always comes up with new ideas.” One of his ideas- a school art competition- created so much of a buzz around Busy Box that it’s Facebook page grew from 750 followers to almost 7,000 in just a couple of weeks.

Women at Lina's art workshop

Imad has also helped Lina to become more confident in planning ahead, decision making and restructuring the business. “He is always pushing us, urging us not to give up on ideas and has encouraged us to get our artwork sold in Kidzmania- a local ‘edutainment’ project. We have a 4m² space, and it’s been a fantastic advertising opportunity.” Lina and Maha have ambitious plans for acquiring a wider range of customers and are hoping to expand into regional markets in the near future.

http://www.busyboxlb.com

Enterprise Qatar‘s objective is to build a flourishing SME sector within Qatar through partnerships that create a supportive environment to enable innovative entrepreneurs to succeed.  As a result of these collaborations, greater leadership capabilities are developed within the Qatari business community. Mowgli’s mission is to provide mentors who inspire, support and empower entrepreneurs in achieving their business and personal potential, encouraging sustainable job creation and social and economic development.

Noora Al Mannai, CEO of Enterprise Qatar, said: “It is a very important step for Enterprise Qatar to establish a partnership with a leading entity such as The Mowgli Foundation. We believe such collaborations complement our goals. Enterprise Qatar will provide directive guidance to our entrepreneurs to help them develop their capabilities while equipping them with essential leadership skills. These initiatives train future business leaders to make sound decisions, which in turn will assist them to face all obstacles and challenges that come their way and achieve their desired goals.”

Commenting on the occasion, Amal Al Mannai, Executive Director, SDC said: “This collaboration marks the beginning of a strategic and unique partnership that will motivate and incentivize those leading successful projects in Qatar. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with Mowgli that will enable the graduates of the Tanmia program for small and medium enterprises and the entrepreneurs, supported by the Rasameel Fund, to succeed in their respective ventures.”

“The number of those leading successful projects in Qatar is impressive and it is through such partnerships and collaborations that we will help them meet their objectives,” Al Mannai concluded.

Tony Bury, the Founder of the Mowgli Foundation, said: “The Mowgli Foundation aims to have a real impact on private sector development and employment and our long-term goal has always been to expand our mentoring through the Middle East and North Africa; offering support to entrepreneurs who really need it. We are thrilled to announce this partnership and place our mentoring capabilities in the Qatari market by joining forces with Enterprise Qatar. Enterprise Qatar’s commitment to developing the country’s SME sector makes them an ideal partner for us.”

The programme will train 12 mentors, mostly from Qatar, positioning them to support 12 carefully screened entrepreneurs who are engaged in growth-stage businesses, utilizing a structured and supported learning programme. All participants will learn the principles of mentorship and be encouraged to support others outside the programme there by maximizing impact.

This programme will include 2 finalists from the Al Fikra Business Plan Competition and will support other entrepreneurs, including those from the Social Development Centre. The “Mowgli Mentoring Experience (MME),” will consist of a three day training, a matching and relationship building programme, which will lay the foundation for the mentoring relationships which will be facilitated and fostered over the ensuing 12 months.

Press releases are blog posts and don’t behave any differently. They just tend to be in PR language and not blog language. We add a title and category of Press Release so that readers can sort them and are aware of the difference.

Log in and click on Dashboard/New Post. You’ll get a page that looks like this.

Start writing your blog in the box (6) and the title (7) and then once you’ve done that, you need to check everything that has the numbers 1-8 on it:

1. The Publish box. Save the draft as you go, press publish when you’re ready- press ‘Edit’ next to ‘Publish Immediately’ to schedule a blog post for the future. Publishing a post will cause a tweet to be sent out on Mowgli Tweets and also on the relevant country category. You can always amend the post afterwards if you need to- the page will have a small ‘edit’ link  on it to take you back into the post editing page.

2. Categories: Please ensure you DON’T send it out as uncategorised. There’s a full explanation of which category to use in this list. If you’re uncertain, using Latest News and Mowgli [country] is generally a safe bet if nothing else. Additionally, the tags are necessary.

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7. Title. Not too long, if it’s a press release put ‘Press Release’ at the start.

8. We have a generic author for Mowgli Press Releases and certain Foundation news- ‘Mowgli Staff Team’ you can select this from dropdown menu. Or you may wish to select an individual staff member as the author. I select Alicja as the author for Mentor and mentee news.

Leave the excerpt box.We only use that for Entrepreneur of the Month.

The programme is run by the international leadership development organisation, Common Purpose, and part of a series of ventures that aims to expand and energise relations between Arab and European cities, and bring together future leaders from both regions. It is a fresh approach to developing innovative responses to new and old problems.  The Abu Dhabi event brought together leaders from cities in 8 countries in Europe and the MENA region.

In February, the Itijah Advisory Group met to discuss what challenge they would set for participants to discuss at the Abu Dhabi event. It had to be a challenge that’s common to both Europe and MENA, and the proposal they came up with is, “what would it take to multiply the number of young people who create new businesses using ICT and social media?”

It’s the job of the 40 participants to come up with solutions to the challenge, so in Abu Dhabi they discussed themes around reducing unemployment and promoting youth entrepreneurship. On the final day of the event, proposals and solutions were presented to a panel of experts. For the next six months, participants will use social media and technology to continue to work together to refine and develop their recommendations, before presenting these solutions to an audience of academics, policy makers and think tanks.

Mowgli founder Tony Bury is a member of the Itijah Advisory Group and participated event in Abu Dhabi.

Some amazing mentors gave their time and expertise for the benefit of entrepreneurs who attended, including tax experts Eileen and Rob, David from Outset Finance who’s a whiz at business planning, legal guru Declan, and marketing mentor Sally (who barely had a chance to breathe all afternoon, so many entrepreneurs wanted to ask her advice!) Some of our own Mowgli mentors, experienced entrepreneurs, kindly volunteered as mentors also and there was hardly a moment all afternoon when a mentor was free.

The marketing and branding expert Stephen Campbell also mentored on the day and was kind enough to facilitate a panel discussion and a q&a so that all the mentees had the chance to ask open questions to the panel. We would like to thank all the mentors who donated their time to us- the feedback we got from attending entrepreneurs was really positive, and we know that the mentors were able to give real help to many in the room. Some great networking went on as well.

Entrepreneurs, we wish you all the best with your businesses- please do keep in touch with Mowgli in future- why not follow us on Twitter @mowgliuk. Meanwhile, there are some photos of the event on Facebook!

Stephen Campbell at his mentoring station

Declan of Roxburgh Milkins LLP in discussion with a mentee

We’ve also been reviewing the past year of Mowgli programmes, and are soon to release our Annual Report and our MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Impact Report. Both will show just how far we’ve come, and more importantly what our mentors and mentees have achieved since our inception in 2009. Watch this space for the Reports’ release!

In the meantime, read on for Mowgli events and opportunities happening in the UK and MENA, interesting resources, and our March-April news.

Mentoring Quote of the Month:

 “You’re not doing anyone a service as a mentor by being a cheerleader – and not telling them when you think they are erring.”

From a great article- the Socratic Way of Startup Mentoring.

Mowgli Community News: MENA

• Mowgli launched our first programme in Palestine this month with the Mowgli Mentoring Experience in Ramallah. 10 mentors were matched with 10 talented entrepreneurs for the start of their year long mentoring relationships. Read more about this exciting milestone for Mowgli here and watch for photos and details of participants coming soon.
• An exciting success story to share! Our very own Mowgli Jordan entrepreneur, from the December 2011 intake, is the latest big news in Jordan’s tech scene: Taktek CEO Gaith Kawar. Will his game ‘My Marbles’ be the next ‘Angry Birds?’ Read more here.
• Mowgli were represented at the World Bank workshop on ‘Innovation Policy‘ in Beirut by one of our mentors, Chris Littlefield.
• Mowgli has ( as we write), launched our first “Train the Trainer” programme to develop multilingual Mowgli Facilitators. This will involve training Arabic and French speakers to facilitate Mowgli Mentoring Experiences and bring mentoring to more MENA countries. You can read more about this exciting development in our next newsletter!
• Tony Bury was a judge at the heats of the MIT Arab Business Plan competition. The finals of the competition will be in June. Keep up to date on our events page.
• Party time!  By the time you read this, both the Jordan and Lebanon ENTREPRENEUR’S JAMS will have taken place, on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd April. Make sure you keep up to date with our free networking events by following us on Twitter @mowglitweets- watch this space for photos! #entsjamjo #entsjamleb

Community News in the UK:

• Mowgli UK launched its second programme in the South West, with the Mowgli Mentoring Experience at Winford Manor, Bristol on 23-25 March. 9 entrepreneurs were matched with 9 mentors. Best of luck to all our fab South West participants- hope to see you on the 24th April! (see below….)
• Mowgli founder, Tony Bury attended the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford – we also ran a free, interactive mentoring event at the Oxford Jam, a fringe event that runs parallel to Skoll. Thanks to the Jam attendees for helping to make the mentoring session such a success!
• Tony Bury will be a judge in the regional heats of the The Pitch 2012- the UK’s biggest small business competition! Make sure you visit their website to enter! Read more here. 

Mowgli UK Opportunities:

• Attention South Westerners! Our FREE “Entrepreneur’s Speed Mentoring Session” takes place during the day on Tuesday April 24th in central Bristol. In this speed mentoring event, pro bono professionals can answer your questions on tax, finance, HR etc. Register NOW or give us a call to get involved!
• South West Entrepreneur’s Jam at the Radisson Blu in Central Bristol on the 22 May. Save the date and bring a friend for networking and catching up!
• All Mowgli UK mentors have been invited to our Annual UK-based Mentor’s Get Together. You should have recieved an invitation already- if you haven’t please get in touch.

MENA Opportunities:

We’ve got mentoring programmes for entrepreneurs in the pipeline across many Middle East and North Africa countries, but no dates yet. Watch this space and please keep sending in your mentor and mentee applications, we will update you all as soon as possible to allocate you to a programme.

Interesting Reads:

• Kiva and Silatech Partnership to Encourage MENA Entrepreneurship: Online microfinance institution Kiva and Qatar-based social enterprise Silatech have joined forces to offer loans to Arab entrepreneurs
• Lessons from the Champions of Change: In honour of National Mentorship Month in the US, the Small Business Champions of Change were hosted at the White House. Mowgli CEO Ian McKay shares the best bits of advice to emerge from the panel discussion.
• Young People in the Middle East Are Ready to Innovate: Wamda present an edited transcript of an interesting interview with Lebanese entrepreneur Habib Haddad, founder and CEO of Yamli.com and prominent advocate of a vibrant MENA startup culture.
•  Why it should be compulsory for big businesses to mentor small businesses: as argued by Norman Shaw in the UK e-zine BusinessZone- we’re discussing it in our Linkedin Group.

And…That’s all folks!

Before you go, make sure you:

a) keep up to date with Mowgli’s daily news via our @mowglitweets (MENA) and@mowgliuk (UK) Twitter feeds!

b) And join our active Facebook and LinkedIn pages to meet others like you from around the world, who are interested in mentoring and entrepreneurship.

c) Don’t forget to click the Donate button if you want to help Mowgli run more mentoring programmes in your country.

and lastly……… d) If you’ve received this from a friend, sign up to receive Mowgli’s monthly newsletter here!

Mowgli Palestine mentors and entrepreneurs at the workshop

The event was a great success and laid the foundations for the year-long mentoring relationships which will run with the support of the Mowgli team. Entrepreneurs’ businesses work in a variety of sectors including natural care products, IT, mobile and web applications, and graphic design.

Mowgli Facilitator Simon Edwards said, “The Mowgli Palestine workshop went superbly well; there is a lot of potential for mentoring in Palestine. We have 8 excellent entrepreneurs and Mentors.” Mowgli’s Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon Manager, Thanaa Khasawneh, also attended the the event. Our thanks to all mentors and entrepreneurs for your participation. Good luck for the next 12 months- the Mowgli team is excited to hear about your progress!

The Mowgli Foundation would like to thank the sponsors of this event, CCC, for their kind support.

The photos from this event are up now on Mowgli’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MowgliFoundation

Ian ran a Mowgli Mentoring workshop, aimed at helping INJAZ staff understand and practise the principles of mentoring and apply it to their own work with young people in Jordan.

Amman-based Gaith is a Mowgli Jordan entrepreneur who is being mentored by fellow Jordanian Basel Saliba and has been on the programme since his matching event in December.

The deal came about after Gaith and his brother and business partner Yazan showcased the game at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March.

The news means that TakTek can now lay proud claim to being the partner in Chillingo’s first deal to be announced in the MENA region. Chillingo is one of the world’s largest mobile game publishers and the TakTek deal has the potential to elevate the status of Jordanian game development globally.

Gaith is understandably excited about the deal and and keen to express his optimism for what it could mean for his business and Jordanian game development. “I am very proud of our young team, and very excited to partner up with a renowned publisher like Chillingo,” he said. “This is the first deal of its kind in the Middle East and establishes Taktek Games as one of the leading game development studios, and cements Jordan as the game development hub of the Middle East.”

The deal is huge for TakTek, who are only a year old and have produced two web-based games; Chillingo’s ‘Cut the Rope’ sold 1 million downloads in just 10 days with over 60 million to date, and ‘Angry Birds’ has sold a total of over 700 million downloads.

The TakTek game that Chillingo will publish is called “My Marbles,” and combines action, accuracy and strategy. Players shoot marbles of various values at targets; hitting a marble means gaining points and marbles; missing means losing the marble for the rest of the game. The aim is to get from 36 marbles to 250, and there are 36 levels.

Read more about the deal from Wamda. Congratulations to Gaith and everyone involved with TakTek Games!

Check out the trailer to “My Marbles,” which is due to be released on iPhone, iPad and Android this summer:

The entrepreneurs are running businesses from a varied and interesting range of sectors including photography, tourism, catering, the arts and wedding planning. The Mowgli team and their mentors are all excited to work with them and watch their businesses and their mentoring relationships progress.

Our thanks to the facilitators Mark Hughes and Ian Prosser, and to all mentors and entrepreneurs for getting involved in the programme- best of luck for the year ahead!

You can take a look at the mentors and entrepreneurs involved in the Mowgli South West programme here:

Kiva connects entrepreneurs to lenders, who can donate as little as $25 to a startup. It has over 700,000 users and has raised almost $300 million in loans to date; it also boasts a 98.91%.

The Kiva Arab Youth Campaign will highlight some of the young Arab entrepreneurs that are looking to finance their projects. Thanks to the involvement of Silatech, entrepreneurs involved will have access to loans of twice the value.

Silatech’s role is to match all loans made through Kiva and they will provide up to £125,000. Silatech’s contributions will then be recycled within the programme, benefiting more young Arabs as the initial loans are repaid.

The partnership promises to have a huge impact in a part of the world that suffers from very high unemployment rates and a number of obstacles that make the decision to venture into entrepreneurship difficult.

The partnership follows Silatech’s recent decision to work in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees in a project that aims to empower Palestinian entrepreneurs by providing low risk loans.

Speaking about the initiative, Premal Shah, president of Kiva said, “Kiva provides opportunities for everyday people to lend their support to Arab youth, and contribute to a larger vision of an Arab world where everyone has the financial resources they need to truly succeed.”

He added, “Kiva’s partnership with Silatech doubles the impact of your loan and enables a vibrant, ambitious and hopeful generation of Arab youth to participate in our global economy.”

This year’s promises to be the biggest yet with the launch of “The Pitch 80.” This involves the selection of 80 small businesses for a short-list; 20 from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively. Mowgli founder Tony Bury will be judging in the regional heats which will take place over the summer.

The 80 short-listed participants will meet at The Pitch Live, a two-day get together in Liverpool in October. Here, the short list will be whittled down and four winners will be chosen to go through to the grand final. Another 16 entrants will compete for a wildcard place, voted by the public.

As well as the new two-day event, The Pitch 2012 sees the introduction of a new social profile presence for entrepreneurs to showcase their companies, rally support from audiences and encourage public votes. The business owner who generates the most buzz around their brand will be rewarded. The wildcard winner will join the other four entrepreneurs pitching in the grand final to win business support worth £50,000.

Applications must be in by May 31 with judging taking place over the summer. For all relevant dates click here.

Advice to Small Businesses:

• Always network
• Get out and see customers
• Be humble, you never know what you can learn from others
• Have mentors in multiple fields
• Modify the message for the audience
• Focus on closing the deal

Advice to Mentors:

• Let the mentees find their own truth. The Mentor’s path may not necessarily suit the mentee
• Have a process of mentoring based on time, urgency and issues
• Guide them towards critical thinking skills to grow
• Follow the “Nacho Cheese” principle – it’s their cheese not yours
• If a customer does not see a value in your product or relationship, then it’s not a business, it is a hobby

Source: Small Business Mentoring Tips from Champions of Change

Owner of LornaLou

Lorna Perks is the Owner of LornaLou Ltd and has been with the Company for 1½ years.  LornaLou Ltd is the trading company for various products that Lorna invented.

The portfolio consists of a medical device and pillbox, a children’s tidy mat, a watertight collapsible food container, a piece of furniture that can be configured as a seat, storage box and a dining table and a device for removing lime scale and dirt from the end of any type of tap.

Although Lorna has no formal qualifications, she has lots of experience working for, and with, Blue Chip Companies in B2B.    She mainly worked in sales and marketing within the following sectors:  telecommunications (Mitel), data communications (Lancare UK Ltd and Dowty CASE), mobile communications  (Martin Dawes (02) and IES Telecom (Vodafone), data mining and profiling to provide statistics within marketing services (Alterian).

Lorna has lived in Bristol for some 30 years and is a Single Mother of two boys aged 7 and 10.

Owner at Homestay Bristol

Michael Bennett was born in London. Married with 2 adult daughters he is the owner of Homestay Bristol a new business created in 2011 which provides full board accommodation and support services to young foreign visitors to Bristol.

He studied Hotel Management with Tourism at Manchester Metropolitan University in the 1990′s and worked as a Hotel Manager for 10 years in the Caribbean and USA. In more recent times he has also gained experience of training and teaching in various countries such as France, Jamaica, and Thailand.

Homestay Bristol has grown in just a year from having just 2 rooms with a maximum capacity of 3 guests to 14 rooms with a maximum capacity of 25 guests and over the next 12 months he plans to increase the number of rooms to 25 with a capacity of 40 guests providing a number of additional services.

Homestay Bristol aims to capitalise on the ever-increasing demand for English language teaching by installing interactive media in every bedroom enabling guests to have English lessons from the comfort of their bedrooms. Homestay Bristol also aims to sell tours around the UK and Europe, improve its online presence and become a global brand.