CULTURA pilot BUSINESS PLANNING

SNAPSHOT

Process: Facilitated planning workshops x 5

MosaicLab’s role: Strategic planning for a new food based initiative

Host organisation: Cultura

Timeframe: January 2024 - April 2024

Participants: 10 participants (women from mostly Farsi and Dari speaking communities)

Outputs: Business Plan Framework

Nicole Hunter with the ladies in the group

OVERVIEW

In January 2024, MosaicLab started working with Cultura to help develop a business plan. The initiative was focused on providing ‘lunchboxes’ or meals to workers around Geelong. The group of about 10 women originally came from places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, and are new arrivals into Australia.

Cultura had identified cooking as one of the key skill areas of newly arrived migrant women and had wanted to establish a food catering business that provided meals to the people of Geelong. Without confirmed funding the first step was to establish a collaboratively owned and designed business plan that was co-designed with the knowledge and skills of the women themselves.

The process was undertaken over five, half day workshops where the group undertook a series of activities to unpack their current skills, knowledge, aims and desires from a social enterprise like this. From there a menu, budget, long-term goals and even a business name were identified.

REMIT (THe CHALLENGE)

What do we want/need in a future business at Cultura?

Translator Mersad with the ladies of the group

“A good conversation can make a significant difference especially working with diverse groups. Mostly, they can build trust and better relationships during the process and I feel this was achieved.”

— Pat Onesta
Community Employment Connector - Settlement and Community Services
Cultura

CHALLENGES

Challenges faced in the process included:

Translation

The participants predominantly spoke Farsi and Dari, and the majority of participants did not confidently speak English. A secondary goal of the process was to build confidence in working together and speaking in English.

At the start two translators were used (Dari and Farsi), but overtime this became one (Farsi) as the majority of women spoke this language. There were even members of the group that helped with translation as the process continued.

Time

Managing our time together to ensure we completed key tasks and yet also didn’t overwhelm the participants with too much information was an important consideration.

With translation comes time – everything takes longer to explain twice and ensure understanding before we move forward with an activity. Over time the ‘unspoken’ communication between the facilitator and the translator became more seamless and we could work through things more quickly.

Strategic vs operational

Finding ways to deep dive into the menu planning and cooking part of the process (what all the women wanted to do) whilst also balancing this with the strategic work of business planning was tricky. Finding ways to ensure that the planning pieces made sense in real world activities was important at each step.

“Many participants were hesitant initially but at the end you could see the confidence levels increase by everyone with their voices more evident. This was an excellent result.”

— Pat Onesta
Community Employment Connector - Settlement and Community Services
Cultura

Nicole Hunter with volunteer translator Mersad Hamedinejad (left) and Cultura Employment Connector Pat Onesta (right).

KEYS TO SUCCESS

Keys to success included:

Having a great client to work with

A client who is relaxed, open to ideas and willing to flex the process was essential as we learnt more about the group, their needs and how we could best work together. This collaborative, partnership approach meant an easy segue between sessions and in preparation for each group meeting.

A core consistent group

As time went on a few more people joined the group – this is exciting and also a bit challenging as we had already completed a lot of the foundational work to get the group settled in together. The group of 4-5 women who saw the process through from start to finish made the process more accessible for those who came in later and needed to catch up.

Finding leadership roles in the grouP

As time progressed it became clear that there were strong leaders amongst the members. Finding out these strengths and capitalising on them as we travelled through the 5 sessions was important. Skills such as a good communication/rapport builder (that kept the harmony amongst the group), those who were excellent at getting key tasks completed (particularly in the kitchen), and those who were idea generators (developing new menu ideas or names for the group). Every single member had strengths that started to emerge as we spent more time together. Taking the time to understand, unpack and even see these skills in action was so valuable.

Image of one of the group members holding a bowl of soup

OUTCOMES

There were some very important key outcomes from this group:

A Business Plan Framework delivered to Cultura.

Stronger, more confident women – sharing their stories, speaking in English and just speaking up in meetings was very evident as time went on.

A strong connection across the members. The women bonded, cooked together, shared ideas and were ready to take this planning and action to the next level.