Studying for her Bachelor’s in Social Sciences course at Makerere University , Trizah Nabadda went to the Women Wealth Wellbeing Network (WoWW) project located in Ntinda for her internship. It never left her the same.
According to Trizah, the project, which is entirely run by women, holds weekly seminars in which women are encouraged and equipped to start their own businesses as a way to ensure they have an alternative income.
“I made it to the project for the first time during my internship and I did well. Fortunately I was recruited as a full time employee even before my graduation in 2014- working as a program assistant.
“I was receiving a good salary plus facilitation which I kept on saving because I wanted to open my own business,” she said.
Trizah who lives in Najeera already had something she was passionate about: baking. She had picked up all her baking skills from her brother who she stayed with and who did small-scale baking as his job. She regularly watched him bake and essentially had learnt by watching.
“My brother used to bake delicious cakes and because I loved eating cakes very much I watched everything he did during my free time so learning [how to bake] was easy for me. My passion for baking as a business was ignited by him,” she said.
After one year of faithfully saving, Trizah had set aside Shs2m. She needed just Shs1.2m to buy a cooker and an oven and used the balance to buy baking ingredients. In 2015, she started off by baking from her brother’s kitchen because she did not have enough money to pay for rent.
“The kitchen was so spacious that I could easily fit in all my machines and still have space for cooking.
“Because I was required to report to office early every morning, I would always spend almost the whole of my night baking what was to be sold or delivered the following day,” she remembered. She handed sales duties to a friend, who would take care of business while Trizah worked at her day job.
In order to keep her clients hooked and to win new ones, she used her Facebook page, seducing them with pictures of freshly-baked cakes. In no time, her orders for things like birthday and wedding cakes, as well as doughnuts and ordinary cakes for kindergarten schools had grown and she was making good money. So she quit her project job to give her business venture full attention.
Not that her road has been entirely free of bumps. Trizah has had to deal with price fluctuations of the ingredients she uses, forcing her to hike the prices of her products against her wish. She also still finds it