“Making a Difference” with Devin Hibbard from Street Business School

Each week on “Making a Difference,” our host, Wayne Veldsman, interviews people making a difference in their community. Today, Wayne had the pleasure of talking with Devin Hibbard from Street Business School.

Street Business School is on a mission to end generational poverty by empowering women as entrepreneurs. As a global leader in entrepreneurship training, they equip women living in poverty with the knowledge they need to build sustainable businesses – and empower them to believe in themselves and seize opportunity.

To learn more, check out https://www.streetbusinessschool.org.

How did you get started in your field or work?: Our story begins with one courageous woman. While walking through a Ugandan slum, we met Millie Grace Akena who was busy creating beautiful paper beads. From our connection, we founded BeadforLife (in 2004) a social enterprise empowering woman to earn income through crafting lovely recycled paper bead jewelry. While BeadforLife offered an opportunity for income generation, we quickly learned that a more sustainable model was business creation and rolled this into our program. If women could launch their own dream businesses, they could access a new level of agency and success and lift their families up. After piloting SBS and realizing its impact, we refined our curriculum so it could be shared around the world. Today we are scaling by certifying partners, large and small, to localize the SBS program and bring it to their communities.

How does your company inspire others?: As part of the SBS training, women not only gain business skills, they gain confidence and a sense of empowerment. This can be life changing in so many ways, even influencing other women who have not yet attended training – a sort of spillover effect.