Back in the old days - Meleya what?

After a visit to our archives we found this video from 2008, when not everyone seemed to know all about Meleya.

"What is Meleya?" Meleya Report asked this question to the shopping public in The Hague. The reactions were diverse. From "Meleya what?!" to "for me, coffee is one big party!"

The video is in Dutch. Would you like to see more old and new films from MeleyaFoundation, see our YouTube channel.

Produced by: Marrit Boersma & Maaike Koeten

News from A'dam - Events all over the place!

The students from the Amsterdam New Business School are full of creative ideas. At the moment they are performing as real event organizers to support the projects of the MeleyaFoundation.

A team of four motivated students (Roger Streng, Randall Smit, Dominique Gloudemans and Max van Eck) organized a fundraising Dinner Event in The Netherlands to raise finance for the ‘Meleya Business Idea Competition Awards’ of last November. The 5th of February, friends and Family of the students had a wonderful evening at Delikeet.

Two other NBS teams are preparing two other up-coming events. We’ll keep you posted about that at our blog. The expected results from the Amsterdam events are optimistic:

Acquisition of Fund that will be used as loan for the Setup of Businesses conceived by young Entrepreneurs in Ethiopia.

In 2011 the first fund will be used to support the 3 entrepreneurs who won The Meleya Business Idea Competition Award.

During the years that the MeleyaFoundation is active in collaboration with St Mary’s University College (SMUC) and The New Business School (NBS), the contribution of the students was very important. Are you curious about the situation two years ago and what the plans and expectations were back then, see the interview with a part of the NBS class of 2009 in the video below.

Training for trainers - from ideas to business

One of the latest projects of the MeleyaFoundation is the development of a Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Addis Ababa. Last month we made some major progress, so it’s time for an update.

From 25 to 29 January, a training was offered for people who are going to support 45 young aspiring entrepreneurs who would like to set up their own business in Ethiopia. The training was a huge success since the initially planned 4 contestants turned out to be 9 professionals. The training was offered by MeleyaFoundation in cooperation with St Mary’s University College (SMUC) in the location of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Bole Road - Addis Ababa.

The training

The motto if the training, given by RaoulChong, was “Translating Ideas to Concrete Business”. The five days of training were all about enable the 9 attentding professionals to train and coach entrepreneurial coaches, to translate ideas into business plans and to coach young entrepreneurs. This entrepreneurs were winners of the ‘Meleya Business Competition Awards’ who were organized last November. The 3 aspiring entrepreneurs, all SMUC Alumni, are Efrem (Tourism), Awel (Advertisment) and Adhenet (Honey). They’re introduced in this video.

Trainer RaoulChong, finance professional, business advisor and ToTtrainer, worked with the team of 9 education professionals for 5 days:

Day 1: Introduction and planning for the next 5 days

Day 2: Process of coaching, toolkit, local issues

Day 3: Entrepreneurs pitch, interview and feedback

Day 4: Coaching 101 (7 trainees) –in parallel the team worked to develop a business idea into pitch and business plan

Day 5: coaching 101(2 trainees), real case and round-up with trainers certification.

The Centre

The Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is still in progress, but with ambitious plans for the future. As a Business Development Center, main tasks are supporting and coaching entrepreneurs, consultancy service, training of trainers for entrepreneurial coaches, project management trainings and organizing and promoting events. Support from local and international institutions is contributing to the success of the centre. The centre has access to local and international consultants and experts, to a strong business network in Ethiopia and Holland and to institutions and resources. Also strategic partnership with different institutions and businesses in a diverse range of sectors is a major strength of the centre.

Major stakeholders

Meleya Foundation                The Hague:          Empowerment Through Exchange

St Mary’s University College   Addis Ababa:       Investing in Youth

New Business School              Amsterdam:        Responsible Business

Alterego Marketing               The Hague:         Creation of Identity

Meskel –Mouvements d’Art    The Hague:         Building Bridges

Funding and Support

Pilot project financed by Oxfam Novib

International Organization for Migration supports the project through the TRQN program(Temporary Return for Qualified Nationals).

Meleya, the story so far

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while since we wrote you a Meleya blog. We’ve been very busy in collaboration with Ethiopia, our projects and the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in particular. But more about that later on.

First, let’s refresh the memory and see what Meleya has been up to in the last four years. We also like to share with you a short film we made two years ago to empower the “real Meleya feeling”. Take a minute for Meleya and help us grow even more. We'll keep you posted on the latest developments any time soon. 

Historic Meleya

4 years ago, an Ethiopian and a French entrepreneurs, based in The Netherlands, took the initiative of involving European and Ethiopian business students in an ambitious project: initiate a Branding process for African products in order to help them reach the Western markets. The name of the project: "Branding Ethiopia".  The main purpose was to answer the expectations of the European consumer without losing the identity of the country of origin.

Meleya came out from there. 

Meleya means Identity in Amharic.

In 4 years the time, Meleya involved directly more than 500 students from 16 University in 4 countries.

  

Meleya Now

Meleya is a brand name for Ethiopian products, the first product that has been launched is MeleyaCoffee

Next to the products and in order to stimulate branding and entrepreneurship, Meleya projects are:

     Meleya Business Idea Competition Award

     Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation 

                          Launched in Addis Ababa to support young people/

                          fresh graduates to set up their own business.

                                       For example: Training for Trainers was conducted.

                           45 Young's will be trained in the coming 3 months

What we have

1. Limited amount of money for the pilot project

2. Support from New Business School Amsterdam students in order to raise funds and grow awareness in Amsterdam Area

3. Local support from St Mary's University in Addis Ababa

What Meleya needs

Technical, financial and human support

Meleya’s Tomorrow

1. Meleya’s ambition is to sell various products and services

2. Meleya projects would grow and will be embedded in Higher education Program and hopefully into the high school with a module

3. Entrepreneurship and Innovation on both continents

4. Meleya will have Business Development Services and will be a main Business Center in Addis Ababa.

5. Meleya will inspire new branding projects

  

Join Meleya with your Time, your Contribution, your Knwoledge, your Network

Embrace the spirit of Meleya with this video

Computer Project: Update by Debritu

Just to share this nice news with you. 

On one meeting of Intent, Asrat told me that he has some big servers he wanted to give to an educational institute. I asked Sait Mary University College, they accepted to pay some costs (transport, storage and refurbishment). Later on I met Millicent during a work visit in Tunisia and shared this news, she said that she has 200 computers she can donate to SMUC.

4 weeks ago, the servers and 200 computers lefted Rotterdam. They are now in Addis. Part of the computers will be used for SMUC Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre. Meleya Foundation will co-create an entrepreneurship programme to support young entrepreneurs. This Project is supported by OXFAM NOVIB. 

I'm happy about this!

Many thanks to Asrat, Millicent, Mission and Relief, Ato Taye, and for sure others i forgot to mention. Numaair, Iwan (it is because of your Intent meeting) and the Good Work for SMUC!! And thank you to my Husband and my daughters for being patient and also inpatient!

What's next?

Now I'm looking for 10 Apple computers for Bleu Nile Film School Students in Addis Ababa. The 1st group of students graduated a few months ago. Some of them would like to create a working lab. They need equipments, software and technical support.

If you are interested in donating:

- Apple computers or laptops (criteria: internal memory preferably 4 GB, speed preferable 233 g Hz)  

- editing programs (final cut, Adobe Premiere Pro, or other)

Please contact us.

I wish you All the best for 2011!! 

2011 seems very promising for Meleya Foundation, with your support!!

Warm embrace,

Debritu

Miljonairs for Meleya

The New Business School Amsterdam was hosting Meleya during the last Miljonair Fair in Amsterdam (9-13/12 RAI, Amsterdam – 53.000 visitors). The purpose was to build extra awareness around the ‘Meleya Business Competition Awards’ (MBCA) and find potential donators to support the project.

Every visitor of the stand was offered a cup of Meleya premium coffee and told the story around Meleya. A short film of the first Meleya Business Competition Awards, having taken place in Addis Ababa, was displayed on the stand.

 

The next step for us and for the New Business School Amsterdam students will be to recruit as many Meleya friends and donators as possible.   

Meanwhile, Meleya has been put on the following social media: facebook, twitter and blog. 

We are also working on a new, interactive, website.


See the short film displayed on the stand here:

Camera by: New Business School

Editing by: Maaike Koeten

At the very beginning of Meleya…

Michel and Debritu

The Meleya adventure started four years ago, when a close friend of mine, Debritu, an Ethiopian woman entrepreneur, asked me to co-organize the Ethiopia Millennium, occurring on the 12th of September 2007. I was honored and accepted with enthusiasm. We agreed on the fact that we also had to initiate a sustainable project, involving both Ethiopia and The Netherlands.

I see myself again, taking a white sheet of paper and writing my thoughts about it. I am not a specialist in humanitarian issues, neither in geopolitical questions but I know one thing: you get the best out of people when you empower them. And to empower Ethiopian people, you need a common project, together with Europeans, on equal basis. Next to this, I am convinced from the start that we have to focus on young people and stimulate them to become entrepreneurs.

My core-business being marketing-communication, a logic idea was to work together with students on both sides, Ethiopia and The Netherlands, in order to create a new sustainable brand. Debritu and I selected two schools, specialized in marketing, the New Business School Amsterdam and the Saint Mary University College in Addis Ababa. We travelled with 12 Dutch students to Addis in order to meet their 12 Ethiopian fellow students and work together on a challenging assignment: create a brand of a new kind, responsible, sustainable and cool at the same time.

I remember that our young people learnt first to know each other by talking and exchanging about their differences or similarities. Then came the travelling within Ethiopia, the laughing and the dancing in the bus, it was great  because I felt then that they could perfectly get along with each other and share the same dreams and goals. They worked hard on their assignment, based at Saint Mary University. We divided them in mixed groups in order to compete. This gave an extra stimulation to the process, every group did its best. Then came the final presentation in front of a jury of teachers and entrepreneurs. Most proposals were really creative and well thought about.  We choose for the name fitting the most with the spirit of the project: Meleya, meaning Identity and “A unique embrace” as a slogan. A new brand was born…

Four years after, I am leaving for the 6^th time to Ethiopia with Dutch students of NBS. A lot of good things have happened in between and a lot of obstacles had to be over won. Meleya has became a beautiful foundation, owner of the brand, chasing a noble goal which is educate young people and stimulate their entrepreneurship. The Meleya brand also allows the selling of Ethiopian Premium coffee. I will tell you more about the Meleya Foundation within a couple of days.

With a unique embrace,

Michel Le Roux

An impression of our first trip to Ethiopia