Accounts Come Alive

As Kawangware and Mathare Cohorts 1 finalized preparations for the upcoming BPC, Cohorts 2 took on their greatest challenge yet—understanding and maintaining business records!

In order to ease the girls’ fears, the YE alumni—who assist in various capacities every class—opened the lesson with an icebreaker. The girls divided into two teams and were challenged to spell out random words by picking up the letter squares laid on the ground in front of them. They finally began to relax as they raced as a team to spell “woman” and “leggings” but were a bit alarmed when the tiebreaker word they were asked to spell was “entrepreneurship.” They all got it right eventually.

Next, the girls moved inside for the “Accounts Come Alive” simulation. For Accounts Come Alive, the girls read through the entrepreneurial endeavors of Neema—a fictional teenage girl who opens her own hotel. Over the course of the first few months, Neema does a good job keeping track of her assets, liabilities, equity, sales and expenses. However, she needs some help determining how much money she is actually making and whether or not her business will be able to survive.

Throughout the interactive group lesson, the girls learn basic formulas to calculate profit as well as assets and also become acquainted with the cash flow cycle. In addition, they completely fill in Neema’s records in terms of capital, stock, debtors and creditors.

By the time they are finished, the girls have learned enough about categorizing costs to begin applying this knowledge to their own experiential businesses. From now on, they will be required to turn in records each week and, from time to time, to report on them.

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