Ritah Strengthens her Skill Set and Grows Her Business
Ritah’s passion for entrepreneurship stems from her upbringing. From an early age, she was taught how to interact with customers at her family’s shop, creating rapport with clients to deliver the best service possible.
Ritah interacts with a customer
These experiences instilled in Ritah the importance of leveraging her skill set to realize her goals. As an active participant in Educate!, Ritah continuously sought leadership opportunities - eager to grow both personally and professionally.
During the pandemic, Ritah participated in Educate!’s distance learning model, strengthening her ability to operate the small store she runs with her mother in Makindye, a suburb near Kampala city.
Throughout the 3-month training, she gained skills including strong communication, saving and investing in profitable business ideas, and applying her negotiation skills to get better deals. “I was a very shy person before joining Educate!. But now, I am very confident and can easily use that to communicate effectively with a large group of people.”
Using this knowledge and the limited resources she had, Ritah started a small produce stand at the shop. At the peak of the lockdown, more people needed access to healthy but affordable food, such as fruits, vegetables, and eggs. Ritah recognized that this was a way she could support her community while also building her business. At one point, she ran out of goods to sell and almost panicked. Then, she recognized this as a sign of growth and strategized to address the supply issues.
Currently, Ritah is using most of the profits from her business to fund her higher education. In addition to talking to her peers about the benefits of becoming entrepreneurs, Ritah is pursuing a degree in community-based rehabilitation. Her goal is to help individuals with disabilities prosper. Alongside this dream, she wishes to own a chain of stores that can employ several individuals, especially youth.