Coming Saturday (22 January 2011) Ungana-Afrika's Participatory Entrepreneurship Development (PED) project kicks off with its first workshop. In this project Ungana-Afrika assists people who live in disadvantaged communities, but who have plenty of entrepreneurial aspiration and energy, in performing local participatory ICT (Information and Communication Technology) needs assessment, and in the development of business ideas based on identified community needs.

A business plan can serve a guide and communication tool that provides details of how a social enterprise intends to implement its initiative. Starting with an enterprise model can however be an invaluable step to developing a well thought out, practical business plan.

Ungana-Afrika, together with consortium members the Meraka Institute, The Innovation Hub and InnovationLab, has won the bid to host the infoDev Southern African Regional Mobile Applications Laboratory.

Greater impact can be made on social challenges if organisations working towards addressing community needs are able to sustain their operations and programmes. Sustainability requires an entrepreneurial approach with an attitude that says “for us to continue doing GOOD we must live WELL”, that means effectively delivering your mission while generating revenue that keeps you afloat.

For the last six years Ungana-Afrika has been going from country to country creating awareness of models and strategies that can be applied to provide ICT support services for under-served communities, with a particular focus on non-profit organisations and small to medium sized enterprises.