Welcome our new Kamuli Youth Solar Bakers!!
After an exciting collaboration with Plan International back in 2018, the team arrived at Smart Up Factory in Kamuli where we were beyond thrilled with the entrepreneurial spirit the students displayed! Smart Up Kamuli were provided with 1 Lytefire 5 the combined oven and roaster where they could bake bread, cookies and cakes whilst also having the opportunity to roast peanuts! During the course of 3 weeks the students learnt many skills such as the technical maintenance and installation of the Lytefire, entrepreneurship, baking theory and practical.
During the entrepreneurship training, the Smart Up students were taught how to market and promote a business where the students learnt how to create their very own promotional flyer in hope to get regular clients, taking orders, as well as locals passing by. For now, they don’t sell at any market but take private clients. But for sure, there will be quite a development branching out to the markets in the future when they look further into it!
The purpose of the Smart Up Factory is to empower youths by promoting free educational training for youths especially young girls that have been victim of teenage pregnancies and forced to leave school due to caring for their child. Smart Up Factory inspires, motivates and transforms the lives of many vulnerable youths by giving them a second chance at education with a diverse range of trainings! This is where the Lytefire team makes an appearance! One of the training the Smart Up Factory wanted us to get involved with is Solar baking!
"Smart Up Factory inspires, motivates and transforms the lives of many vulnerable youths"
The group with their now defined roles (baker, inventory, sales, technical team..) work for the bakery at the Smart Up Hub in Kamuli. They agreed to work for free until there is some profit. There is this bakery committee who supervises the whole process/the bakery while the manager of the overall bakery that oversees all roles within the bakery is one of the mentors of the Hub who will manage the team making sure the team all work and communicate together.
The new “Kamuli Youth Bakery’’ on the very last day we called ‘Solar demo day’ sold many products earning a profit of 75,000 UGX (around 19EUR)! There was a very long and excited line of parents and visitors which meant the bakery team had a lot of solar baking to do! During the demo day we showed the audience the traditional stick burning test which gathered a huge crowd around the Lytefire!
“Kamuli Youth Bakery’’ on the ‘Solar demo day’ sold many products earning a profit of 75,000 UGX (around 19EUR)!"
The students had also baked a very impressive 3-level-cake for 150’000 UGX (around 37EUR), from one man from Plan International as he had ordered from the Kamuli Youth Bakery to pick up on Saturday! Asupas, the manager of the Kamuli Youth Bakery informed us that the team has been baking 2 cartons of bread buns a week! This is around 500 delicious solar baked bread buns which are sold to friends and families of the students at the Smart Up hub in Kamuli! They have even had order requests for occasion cakes such as governmental events, birthdays and graduations!
