"It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop."

By Ben Koot, inspirator TimeDesk

A year ago I started the VT Bunabumali challenge with nothing but the big picture of building the school rebuilding the dormitory and taking care of the children. All I had was this picture and no idea what Bunabumali looked like, nor any experience in running such a project. The little information I had on Africa was what I'd learned during my days in the travel industry, so not really related to coaching people on-line on topics I was not familiar with.

When folks in the North are asked for assistance, the natural response is; "Write a busines splan" Norman had done that, like many thousands of other people in Africa that try connect to NGO's, on-line volunteer services and other institutions. Over the past year, I have seen a lot of these plans for other development initiatives, based on questions relating to starting a business, with the aim of satisfying the needs of the donor organisation instead of the the needs on the ground.

Even trying to apply for a moderate micro credit involves answering impossible questions, created by people that had little idea of local conditions. We have tried a number of organisations but were unsuccessful, which got me thinking...

Why waste time this way, is it possible to create a situation whereby we don't need that kind of support and is it be possible to achieve Norman's ambitions by using existing resources, local creativity and knowledge available for free on the Internet. The answer is YES you can by using the technique of the termite.

We talked and talked for hundreds of hours, tried a number of web tools and slowly learned what made sense . We talked about local resources, the size of Bunabumali, food, chicken, cows, children, fruit juice, transport, internet access, water management, bridges, bamboo, bikes, natural building, education, networking, sales promotion, mobile phones, building our own computers, setting up small businesses, banking systems, tourism, having no money, setting up a distribution system, etc...

All that time it looked like nothing really happened. Sure we had some web logs containing a strange mix of seemingly unrelated ideas and I am sure like me Norman must have felt disappointed about the progress. The main software tool we used turned out to be to complicated and it cost money I couldn't afford. It looked like we got nowhere and than disaster struck! I had no job and lived on social benefit but all of a sudden the social services decided to end support and put all unemployed people in a special program which meant it was impossible for me to continue. I really got into problems, and, with pain in my heart, was forced to end my support to Norman. The website was closed down and months later I forced to start from scratch.

Tumblr

We started with The Bunabumali Chronicle. Based on the free tumblr micro blog service and gradually rebuild what we had lost and started integrating into the other social software tools Norman had started to play with when I disappeared.

On the surface this still looks like a simple blog, but under the hood it's a clever collection of topical project sites showcasing all the topic we addressed for over a year. I also reconnected to some of the folks I had met in Holland and on the web who I thought had the key to some of Norman's problems but at that time I didn't see all the connections.

It's thanks to Corry Richardson I came to realize the real challenge as his great pictures showed me the real Bunabumali. Now all of a sudden the project came to live and made it possible to start writing the business plan

Virtual Bunabumali

Virtual Bunabumali is based on`Starting Up - Achieving success with professional business planning' a 200 page long practical handbook developed by McKinsey & Company in Switzerland. The handbook has been created after extensive conversations with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other people who often review business plans as part of their professional career.

It is effectively an evaluation concept that can be used to structure any development project, the essential research phase before you can even think of applying for donor support. This is educational as well as essential because it shows people what you can do yourself, without talking to donor organisations that will only be interested in you if your plans are a guaranteed success and if you have part of capital you you think you need. It also helps you to ask the write questions to the correct institutions.

This way you don't answer the donors' questions anymore, but present your activities as a business opportunity to the sponsors, not a charity! If you follow our approach you will also learn cash requirements are a fraction of your original business idea.

BID competition

What have we learned is now part of our application for the BID competion. Over the next few weeks we will complete the real Bunabumali business planner

NING

You are all invited to join our Ning the place where you'll find everything you need to get involved with Bunabumali and share ideas with folks from other on-line platforms like Facebook.

Ben